BRAGUE, Rémi The Wisdom of the World

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The Wisdom of the World
T W
  W
The Human Experience of the Universe
in Western Thought
Rémi Brague
Translated by Teresa Lavender Fagan
T U  C P C  L
The University of Chicago Press, Chicago 
The University of Chicago Press, Ltd., London
©  by The University of Chicago
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ISBN-: --- (cloth)
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Originally published as La Sagesse du monde: Histoire de l’expérience humaine de l’Univers, 
© Librairie Arthème Fayard, .
The University of Chicago Press gratefully acknowledges a subvention from the government 
of France, through the French Ministry of Culture and Centre National du Livre, in 
support of the costs of translating this volume
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Brague, Rémi, –
 [Sagasse du monde. English]
 The wisdom of the world : the human experience of the universe in Western thought / 
 Rémi Brague ; translated by Teresa Lavender Fagan.
 p. cm.
 Includes bibliographical references and index.
 ISBN --- (cloth : alk. paper)
 . Cosmology—History. . Ethics—History. I. Title.
 BD .B 
 ′.—dc
 
♾ The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of the American 
Standard for Information Sciences—Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials 
ANSI Z.-.
Contents
Preface vii
Translator’s Note xi
Introduction 
 :   
 Prehistory: A Pre-Cosmic Wisdom 
 The Birth of the Cosmos in Greece  
 :  
 Socrates’ Revolution; Plato’s Restoration 
 The Other Greece: The Atomists 
 Other than Greece: The Scriptures  
 The Other Other: Gnosticism 
 :   
 Marginal Models  
 The Standard Vision of the World  
 An Ethical Cosmos 
 A Cosmological Ethics   
 Abrahamic Excess   
 :   
 The End of a World   
 An Impossible Imitation  
 The Lost World   
Notes  
Bibliography   
Index  
 Contents
Preface
In this work I propose to take a look at a historical event that has unfolded
over a very long period and that consequently can only be seen from a very
great distance. It concerns the changes in the way people have experienced
the universe in which they have lived. I am therefore attempting some-
thing like a history of beings-in-the-world.
The phenomenon of our presence in the world does not belong to a
single realm of study. It occurs everywhere: we can find traces of it in
philosophical reflections, but in religion or art as well. And yet, it goes so
much without saying that it is thematicized—brought into conscious-
ness—only in very unusual circumstances.
I have therefore had to cover so broad an era that to admit as much is
already a cause for amusement: this era basically corresponds to the entire
historical progress that has occurred since the invention of writing,
i.e., over five millennia. Although the time period is vast, the area how-
ever is somewhat more restricted, since I have studied only the circum-
Mediterranean regions, beginning with the Egyptian Old Kingdom and
continuing through Classical Antiquity, the medieval Christian, Jewish,
and Muslim worlds, down to the modern West. Other civilizations have
been excluded not from lack of respect for them, but simply because I do
not have the linguistic abilities to study them directly and because, more-
over, I am primarily interested in what has resulted in our present times.
The both omnipresent and unattainable nature of the phenomenon
under study in principle invited me to look for expressions of it absolutely
everywhere. However, within the realm to be covered, and even for the
period on which I have focused—broadly, Classical Antiquity and the
Middle Ages, from Plato to Copernicus—it goes without saying that I
have only been able to proceed by casting my nets far and wide, without by
definition being able to determine the comparative importance of what
has been caught and what might have gotten away. When I study the
modern era, from which many more texts are available, and about which I
am all the more incompetent, this method becomes riskier than ever.
Readers are thus asked to rein in their skepticism and be indulgent of
what is being attempted.
. . .
References have been confined to endnotes so as to interrupt the flow
of the text as little as possible. However, I have quoted as many texts and
secondary sources as possible. The book therefore will often appear as stiff
and dry as a card file, for which I ask the reader to forgive me. But I hope
the reader won’t forget that I am only thinking of you: being often re-
quired to work secondhand, I have attempted as much as possible to pro-
vide direct access to primary sources. In short, I have placed in my notes
what I as a reader like to have an author provide to me.
To lighten things up a bit, I have resorted to using abbreviations, the
key to which may be found at the end of the book. When an author is
known by only one work (Herodotus, Lucretius, Plotinus, etc.) I have
omitted the name of that work.
I have cited texts in the editions I have chosen for reasons of pure con-
venience: because they are editions I own personally, or have easy access
to—mainly in what pass for “libraries” in Paris. This is why they are not
always the best editions. I prefer to refer to the originals of the works I cite,
even if some have been translated since.
In most cases the translations I provide are my own. I do, though, point
out references to other translations, when they exist, so that the reader may
reread in their context the quotations that I make. When I must translate
a translation, I point out that fact.
All non-roman alphabets have been transliterated.
. . .
I began work on the present book around . Since that time I have
had several opportunities to present all or part of my research. The most
lengthy presentation was during my D.E.A. seminar at the Université de
Paris I. I presented it a bit more rapidly to graduate students at Boston
University (Spring semester of ), where I was able to take advantage
of libraries worthy of that name. I made an even shorter presentation in
three half-days to the Societat Catalana de Filosofia in Barcelona in No-
vember . I presented the salient points at the University of Rennes, at
the seminar “Lebenswelt, Natur, Politik” (Graduiertenkolleg “Phänomenolo-
gie und Hermeneutik”) of the universities of Bochum and Wuppertal in
Haan, at the thirteenth Taniguchi Symposium of Philosophy of Lake
Biwa, at the U.F.R. of Philosophy of the Université Paris XII-Créteil, at
the D.E.A. seminar of the faculty of Catholic theology of the University
of Strasbourg, and finally while giving the Shlomo Pines Memorial Lec-
viii Preface
ture at the Israel Academy of Sciences and Humanities in Jerusalem in
January , a lecture that was repeated at the University of Pennsylvania
the following month.
I would like to thank all those who invited me to those occasions:
Charles L. Griswold, Jr., Jordi Sales i Coderch, Frédéric Nef, Klaus Held,
Tomonubu Imamichi, Monique Dixsaut, Raymond Mengus, Shaul
Shaked, and Gary Hatfield. I greatly benefited from the presentations of
the students in my seminars and from comments made by those who at-
tended my lectures. I wish to thank them all, but, given their numbers, I
can only do so as a whole.
However, I must mention Irène Fernandez, and my wife Françoise,
who were kind enough to read my manuscript and make valuable com-
ments on it. In addition, my wife and our children have patiently put up
with a husband and father who has been both too wise and too worldly.
Preface ix
Translator’s Note
I am privileged to have had the opportunity to work closely withimportance: “Socrates was the first to recall the
philosophy of the sky, to place it in the cities, even to introduce it into
homes and forced it to seek out in regard to life, customs, and things both
good and evil (de vita et moribus rebusque bonis et malis).”11 The implica-
tions of this are remarkable: turning away from the study of nature in or-
der to turn toward a study of good and evil things obviously implies that it
 Four Models
is not in the sky (natural reality par excellence) that one will find good and
evil things. The difference between good and evil does not apply to natu-
ral realities. These implications are made explicit elsewhere: the knowl-
edge of natural realities, assuming such knowledge is possible, “has noth-
ing to do with a good life” (nihil . . . ad bene vivendum).12 For us, viewing
physical realities as being axiologically neutral has been a given for a very
long time. We therefore no longer see that such a conclusion is a result,
that it had to be taken by force. It is precisely just such a conquest that can
be read in the tales of the Socratic revolution.
The most complete account is the stylized reconstruction Plato gives of
the intellectual biography of Socrates in the confession of the Phaedo. Yet
Plato’s work does not exactly include the description of a passage that be-
gins with a study of objective nature free of any consideration of values,
and that results in moral questioning. Rather the work shows a limiting
of the search for good and evil to the realm of human relationships. For
Socrates himself this resignation was only a second choice, a deuteros plous.
Socrates’ dream was not only to discover a rigorous physics; it was above
all to uncover a unified system of concepts, unequivocally valid for both
physics and ethics. If Socrates based such hopes on the nous of Anaxagoras,
it is because that concept could explain both moral actions and physical
events: “[It seemed to me that] starting with this principle (logos) [the
principle of the best], it was appropriate for man to seek nothing other, on
the subject of oneself or on the subject of other [things] (peri hautou ekeinou kai
peri tōn allōn), than that which is better and most excellent.”13 The impor-
tant element here is the establishment of a correspondence between the
self and things. The chasm that separates the mode of being of the self and
that of things present in the world is thus bridged—as was the case, it
seems, in Greek thought in general.14
Thus Socrates renounced that unification of experience in favor of con-
sidering solely phenomena relating to the polis, that is, the being-together
of men. In this way he disconnected anthropology from cosmology and
introduced his plan to found an anthropology based solely on itself.
AWA KI N G F RO M T H E D RE A M : T H E T I M A EU S
In the history of ancient philosophy the “Socratic revolution” did not rep-
resent an irrevocable break. It only appears as such after the fact, in a
schematic reconstruction of the history of thought. In fact, the situation
was quite different since the revolution was followed, within Plato’s work
itself, by a sort of restoration. This was seen very clearly beginning in
Socrates’ Revolution; Plato’s Restoration 
Antiquity, and it was explained as needed through more or less artificial bi-
ographical data.15 Plato rebuilt a bridge over the abyss Socrates had opened,
by positing Good as the supreme principle. Good exercises its sovereignty
over physical reality; but it equally rules the conduct through which the
human individual turns his soul into a coherent whole (ethics) and gives
the polis where his humanity must come to its fulfilment the unity with-
out which the polis must fall (politics). Socrates thus once again evokes the
figure of Anaxagoras and the advantage that Pericles derived from his as-
sociation with him. Here we have an example of the way in which right
knowledge of that which dominates us (meteōrologia) and of the nature of
intelligence (nous) and of its absence opens up onto political rhetoric.16 In
the Laws, which in the chronological order of Plato’s works is no doubt the
very last dialogue, the Stranger of Athens shows that reason does not just
intervene in a derived fashion, like man’s attempt to adapt as best he can,
through his technical abilities, to an initial situation of unreason, but on
the contrary that it is there from the beginning, at the very birth (phusis)
of that which exists. Consequently no piety is possible without the aware-
ness that the Intellect (nous) guides all that is.17
The dialogue that most clearly asserts the interdependent link between
a particular cosmology and the task that falls to man is the Timaeus. It is
all the more important to give this work a place of honor here within the
history of ideas because its influence on ancient, medieval, and emerging
modern philosophy can hardly be overestimated. It is as if the Timaeus
were attempting to reestablish, doubtless on another level, that which the
Socrates of the Phaedo had renounced—perhaps unwillingly. We obviously
cannot undertake an in-depth analysis of this complex dialogue here. I will
limit myself to a few general remarks before examining that which, though
probably not the most original in the Timaeus, was the most influential.
The Timaeus is commonly viewed as a cosmology. One of the most au-
thoritative commentaries is even entitled “Plato’s Cosmology.”18 I do,
however, have some reservations before this so-called evidence and am
tempted to consider the dialogue as being thoroughly ironic, as the best vi-
sion of the cosmos but not necessarily the truest, as the best possible ex-
posé of a fundamentally impossible knowledge, just as unattainable as the
ideal city of the Republic.19 Whatever the case may be, the work deals with
anthropology at least as much as, or perhaps even more than, with cos-
mology. More specifically, Timaeus, who gives the dialogue its name, de-
scribes the cosmology required by a particular anthropology. This is in any
event what he begins by saying most explicitly: the text will reveal the for-
mation of the world up to that of man.20 And, in a more discrete fashion,
 Four Models
it seems to me that the very structure of the text parallels the structure and
functions of the human body, as the dialogue itself describes them—the
first part corresponds to the head, the second to the torso, with its major
connection at the diaphragm.21
The plan for human life can be summed up as an imitation of the kos-
mos. According to the Timaeus the kosmos was created by a divine crafts-
man who strove to render his work as similar as possible to the perfect
model. He made the sky and the secondary gods who inhabit it, and to
whom he delegated the creation of man. The sky was placed in motion by
a soul that ensures the regularity of its movement. Similarly, man possesses
a soul that derives from the same mixture as the soul of the world, but with
a lesser degree of purity. At birth that soul is plunged into the flow of bod-
ily humors which carry it along in their disordered current. The soul only
gradually reestablishes internal order, at the price of an education. The in-
dividual soul must imitate the regularity of the movements of the soul of
the world. This task is preset by an already established similarity in the
very structure of things: the head in which the individual soul turns in cir-
cles has the same rounded shape as the perfect sphere formed by the en-
tire universe.22 In order to imitate the cosmos, one must have knowledge
of it. The first part of the dialogue, which considers reality only from a
teleological perspective, thus explains from that perspective the presence
of the sense of sight: “The god invented and gave us vision in order that
we might observe the circuits of intelligence in the heaven and profit by
them for the revolutions of our own thought, which are akin to them,
though ours be troubled and they are unperturbed; and that,by learning
to know them and acquiring the power to compute them rightly accord-
ing to nature, we might reproduce the perfectly unerring revolutions of the
god and reduce to settled order the wandering motions in ourselves.”23
This passage expresses through images the connection between the theo-
retical dimension of philosophy and its practical dimension.24 The theory
is at first simple vision, but the text quickly goes on to a consideration of
invisible mathematical regularities that underlie the visible texture of the
heavens. Astronomy, not a naive gaze, is beatifying. It is therefore neces-
sary that the citizens of the just polis study it, the elite in-depth, and the
masses minimally.25
The second part adds a consideration of necessity to that of what is
best. A passage located at the end of the first subdivision of this new con-
sideration recalls the ethical importance of the division of causes: “We
must accordingly distinguish two kinds of cause, the necessary and the di-
vine. The divine we should search out (zētein) in all things for the sake of
Socrates’ Revolution; Plato’s Restoration 
a life of such happiness as our nature admits; the necessary for the sake of
the divine, reflecting that apart from the necessary those other objects of
our serious study cannot by themselves be perceived (katanoein) or [un-
derstood (labein)] or communicated, nor can we in any other way have part
or lot in them.”26 How are we to understand this “searching out” of the di-
vine cause? Is it a study whose method Timaeus will indicate to us? Or is
it a more practical knowledge to be obtained? Near the end of the second
part the theme is taken up again, with in addition the reminder of the
cause of the disturbance of the circles of the soul, whose presence the first
passage had simply evoked without explaining why it occurred: “The mo-
tions akin to the divine part in us are the thoughts and revolutions of the
universe; these, therefore, every man should follow, and correcting those
circuits in the head that were deranged at birth, by learning to know the
harmonies and revolutions of the world, he should bring the intelligent
part, according to its pristine nature, into the likeness of that which intel-
ligence discerns, and thereby win the fulfillment of the best life set by the
gods before mankind both for this present time and for the time to come.”27
The link between the cosmological and the anthropological is thereby
restored. But it is henceforth inverted: contrary to what occurred in the
ancient visions of the world, it is no longer man who assures the order of
the world; it is the imitation of the preexisting order of non-human, phys-
ical realities that helps man to achieve the plenitude of his humanity. As
we shall see, wisdom will be an imitation of the world.
And yet we see that to the theme of the imitation of celestial regulari-
ties there was an ironic counterpoint in the idea that gymnastics must also
be ruled by cosmic movements. But whereas the passage cited above seemed
to discourage an imitation of the errant cause in favor of the “divine” cause,
now the model is the irregular, Brownian movement, of the primal quali-
ties in the container. The movement must be reproduced by assuring the
body a maximum amount of motion, either through gymnastic exercise,
or at least—by rocking the cradle of newborns: “But if he will imitate what
we have called the foster-mother and nurse of the universe and never, if
possible, allow the body to rest in torpor; if he will keep it in motion and,
by perpetually giving it a shake, constantly hold in check the internal and
external motions in a natural balance; if by thus shaking it in moderation,
he will bring into orderly arrangement, one with another, such as we de-
scribed in speaking of the universe, those affections and particles that
wander according to their affinities about the body.”28
The Timaeus is thus not only the first work in which the idea of the
world as kosmos was thematicized in a central way, but it was also the first
 Four Models
to define human excellence as a “wisdom of the world.”29 The same theme
is dealt with in the dialogues Plato wrote in his old age, as well as in the
Epinomis.30 The model that emerges from it remained preeminent until
the modern era. It did so in the developed form that it assumed during a
secular journey, which began immediately following Plato. I have pre-
sented it here in its germinal state; I will describe it later enriched with ac-
cretions that ultimately revealed all that it implied.31
Socrates’ Revolution; Plato’s Restoration 
Chapter 
The Other Greece:
The Atomists
The Platonic, or rather “Timaean,” model was not the first, nor did it re-
main the only one. It became dominant only after a long history. Before
Plato, reference to the cosmos was in fact what some Sophists brushed
aside. Not all those who were classified as Sophists were uninterested in
cosmological issues.1 Hippias is one such example. But Protagoras’s state-
ment, which portrays man as the measure of all things, whatever that might
mean, rejects out of hand any claim to apply a cosmic model to man or to
human phenomena (and above all to the logos).2 There were non-cosmic
wisdoms. We have seen this in the ancient Near East. And it remained true
in pre-Platonic Greece as well as afterward. Some wisdoms were born of
the Socratic revolution and might be more faithful to it than Plato was in
the Timaeus. The Cynics were not concerned with nature;3 the same is true
of the Cyrenaics who claimed that nature was unattainable.4 They reasoned
following a notion that came out of the Treatise on Non-Being by Gorgias:
nature escapes our grasp and even when we understand it, such knowledge
is useless to us. Indeed, even if, high above in the sky, we could take a
global view of nature, we would not be more virtuous for all that.5 The
Pyrrhonian Skeptics, just like the Epicureans, dealt with physics (phusi-
ologia) only with a view to tranquility (ataraxia); but for them, that tran-
quility was obtained in an even more indirect fashion: the study of physics
did not lead to possible explanations of phenomena; rather it enabled one
to refute the explanations of others with equally strong evidence.6
I will spend more time looking at another school, the one which is
called, no doubt inadequately, “atomistic,” and which is notably associated
with the names of Democritus, Epicurus, and Lucretius. This school ap-
pears to respond directly to the central theme of this study, and to quite
consciously construct a well-thought-out model that enables a considera-
tion of nature and of the status of a knowledge of the physical universe, a
knowledge it begins by declaring possible, while arguing against the Skep-
tics.7 This school is of even greater interest to the present study since be-
ginning with Epicurus it appears quite explicitly to challenge the Platonic
model. It can be interpreted as a dismissal of the anthropological impor-
tance of the notion of the world. In this tradition, the structure of the uni-
verse is in the final analysis indifferent to human existence and to its un-
bridled development. Happiness is in no sense favored by an examination
of celestial phenomena. In fact, examining such phenomena too closely
could even threaten human happiness. A model for human excellence must
be sought elsewhere.
D EM O C RI T U S
What we know of Democritus does not tell us how he envisioned the role
of nature and/or of a knowledge of nature in the formation of an ethics.
Some scholars even believe that his thinking is quite simply incoherent
and that his physics does not lead to the establishment of an ethical sys-
tem, indeed, that it precludes the very possibility of one—in particular
due to his necessitarianism, which seems to exclude freedom and thus re-
sponsibility.8 Cicero states that Democritus “had placed beatitude in the
knowledge of things, as if he wanted happiness to result from research car-
ried out on nature.”9But as the thesis being upheld in this context is that
happiness resides in knowledge, the statement was probably “adapted,” and
Democritus was added to Epicurus to further strengthen the argument. In
addition, the doxographer Aetius presents the doctrine of Leucippus, Dem-
ocritus, and Epicurus, saying that the world has no soul and no providen-
tial government.10 But how can the authentic doctrine be distinguished
from the reconstruction carried out following ideas borrowed from the
Timaeus? Does this mean that the Democritean universe was not aware of
the Platonic doctrine of the “soul of the world”? The notion that man is a
“miniature world” is indeed found in Democritus, but it does not seem to
imply an invitation for the “miniature world” to imitate the larger one. On
the contrary, it seems to imply that the same laws apply to both—laws that
impose certain properties upon them—and which, since those laws are
followed in any case, could not be imitated. For Democritus, the internal
harmony of the soul and of the human body is more important than that
of the world.11
The Other Greece: The Atomists 
EP I C U RE A N I S M
A. The Interest of Physics
With Epicurus and his disciples, an original conception of nature and its
study was born. As was the case with Plato, and in the tradition pioneered
by him, the study of physics had a moral goal. As almost everywhere in an-
cient philosophy, the emphasis was placed on not doing violence to nature
and on letting oneself be guided by nature.12 The Epicureans did not be-
lieve that morality could become perfect without physics;13 and they ar-
gued against a purely theoretical use of physics, which in their opinion was
a complete waste of time.14
But unlike what occurred within the Platonic model, the moral goal
was reached indirectly. It was not from being inspired by the known world,
but by the knowledge of the world, that such a moral reform could be ob-
tained. This is what the Epicurean Torquatus explains in Cicero: “Thus
one derives from [the study of ] physics (e physicis) the courage to face the
fear of death, the strength to fight the fear [that comes] from superstition,
a calming of the mind, once the ignorance of all hidden things has been
expelled, and temperance, once the nature of desires and their like have
been explained.”15 The effect of physics is not objective, but purely subjec-
tive. The physical universe in itself is not truly interesting in the strict
sense: we do not have to go through it (inter-est) to become that which we
ought to be. The goal of the exercise is not specifically knowledge, but the
absence of disturbance (ataraxia), life without upsets (athorubos).
Certainly, knowledge might provide great joy, as intense as if it were an
end in itself, and concomitant joys in exercising that knowledge: “In phi-
losophy enjoyment keeps pace with knowledge. It is not learning followed
by entertainment, but learning and entertainment at the same time.”16 But
it remains true that the effect of knowledge is not the same. It is no longer
a question, as in Plato, of an imitation, but of a distancing. The goal of
knowledge is not assimilation, rather it is objectification, as a means of dis-
similation. The object of knowledge, like death, must be “nothing for us.”
This goal is recalled at the end of discussions of certain specific topics,
such as the face of the moon or the regularity of celestial revolutions, a pas-
sage the conclusion of which, according to the text of the manuscripts,
suggests that “we rejoice with the god.”17 Epicurus begins by stating the
goal of his physics: “First of all, therefore, not to believe that there is any
other goal of knowledge in the realm of celestial phenomena (meteōra) . . .
than tranquility (ataraxia) and strong certainty, just as for everything
else. . . . If fears (hupopsiai) of the phenomena of the sky did not disturb
 Four Models
us (ēnōkhloun), nor those that we experience regarding death, that it may
be something that relates to us, and the fact of not knowing the reasons for
pain and desires, we would not have an additional need (prosdeisthai) for
a knowledge of substances (phusiologia).”18 The second fragment is com-
posed using a structure that is found elsewhere in the Epicurean school
and is perhaps typical of its method or, at least, of the Epicurean attitude:
the reconstruction of a virtual state in which what is now a need was not;
the necessity of adding what should not have been useful to make up for
something that is henceforth truly lacking. Porphyry has handed down a
long fragment of political philosophy by an otherwise little known Epi-
curean, Hermarchus. In it we read: “If everyone were equally able to ob-
serve that which is useful and to respect it, we would not have the addi-
tional need (prosdeisthai) for laws.”19
B. An Anti-Timaeus
This attitude was itself developed to respond to a model that rendered it
necessary. That model, it seems to me, is the one I previously derived from
Plato’s Timaeus. We have already noted the presence in Epicurus of pas-
sages in which Plato, and more precisely the Timaeus, is taken to task.
Thus the doctrine of the elements is criticized in the treatise On Nature.20
In a passage that comes closest to the one—essential for our purposes—
on the imitation of celestial movements, Plato discusses the complex move-
ments of the planets. Astronomical speculations provide reason to fear the
future “to those who are incapable of calculating (tois ou [si vera lectio] duna-
menois logizesthai).” It is possible that Epicurus meant to parody that phrase.
Indeed he speaks of those who are capable of experiencing the supreme
and stable joy that comes out of a very balanced condition of the flesh and
a credible anticipation of it, a joy reserved for “those who are capable of cal-
culating (tois epilogizesthai dunamenois).”21 The context is the same: a rela-
tionship with the future. The addition of the prefix epi to the verb indicates
the surpassing of the present through calculation. But the most external sup-
port, the heavenly bodies, is replaced by the most intimate one, the flesh.
Similarly, regarding the connection between physics and ethics, we
have the impression that Epicurus is responding to Plato point by point.
For Plato assigned the same goal to astronomy as Epicurus did, and in the
same words: to do away with disturbance (tarakhē), to put the disordered
periods of the soul into order through the imitation of the ordered periods
of celestial bodies (ataraktois tetaragmenas).22 However, if Epicurus adopts
Platonic vocabulary, it is to subvert it. Celestial phenomena cannot favor
The Other Greece: The Atomists 
the absence of disturbances (ataraxia) that they in fact bring about. The
fact that the movements of the celestial spheres themselves know a sort of
ataraxia does not imply that they are likely to communicate it. They are not
peaceful and peace-bringing objects of contemplation. On the contrary,
they cause disturbance and anguish.23 It even appears as if the sky is the
paradigm of the place where all our trouble comes from, including tectonic
phenomena. The Epicurean poet of the Etna suggests that, faced with a
volcanic eruption, knowledge enables us not to be misled, not to remain
mute, pale with anguish, imagining that “threats from the sky have traveled
toward the subterranean world.”24 There is no question of escaping the
terrors of this earthly world by taking refuge in the sky: it is the sky that is
the primary source of terror. It is knowledge that must remove the sting
from all sources of disturbance, both celestial and terrestrial.
This primordial goal of physics explains the “endless nonchalance”25
with which Epicurus proceeds with regard to an explanation of natural
phenomena. His method does not involve indifference toward truth. There
is a need for truth: only true knowledge of nature (phusiologia) is able to
deliver us from disturbance.26 But the true is not transposed into the one.
What isimportant is that there be at least one explanation, lest we remain
faced with a disturbing mystery. Thus nothing prevents the possibility of
a choice of several concurrent explanations. Epicurus thus proposes, espe-
cially in meteorology, several solutions without seeking to reduce them to a
single principle believed to account for everything.27 And Lucretius goes so
far as to say that, out of several explanations, since there are several worlds,
one of the explanations applies at the very least to one of those worlds.28
C. An Inimitable World
To this attitude toward the world and the knowledge that we obtain of it
there corresponds, as if it were the foundation, a new concept of the kosmos.
It contrasts on every point with that proposed by Plato and Aristotle and can
even be conceived as destined to render the idea of an imitation of the world
unthinkable. This Epicurean concept is moreover a return to the original
meaning of the Greek word, “ordering.” Atoms are distinguished from their
arrangement. The arrangement in which we live is one of many possible
arrangements, even one of the arrangements that actually coexist. Further-
more, unlike eternal atoms, this arrangement is perishable. Granted, the
laws that govern the formation of worlds are the same, regardless of the de-
termined organization of one or another of the worlds. But the resulting
 Four Models
forms vary.29 The spherical form, in particular, so dear to Plato and Aris-
totle, is by no means the only one. Thus in Cicero, the Epicurean Velleius
claims not to understand why that form would be more beautiful and more
worthy of the world than any other.30
The plurality of worlds is not simply a physical theory.31 It bears on the
very idea of kosmos, which becomes relativized through its passage into
the plural form. The final reality is not order, such and such a particular
arrangement, but atoms and the void. The relationship between the world
in which we live and the final reality is not a relationship of a copy to an
original. Knowledge of the world does not enable us to go back to an or-
ganizing wisdom upon which we might govern ourselves, for this world is
no more than that which it happens to be. The fact that our world is only
one exemplar prevents it from being an example.
Classical cosmologies are crowned by theologies, both implicitly, in the
identification of deities with the stars, the most elevated and most beauti-
ful bodies among all that is, according to Plato and Aristotle, and very ex-
plicitly so in Stoicism, for which theology (or rather theiology, the science
of an impersonal divine) is a part of physics. Thus imitation of the world
and assimilation to a god or gods are intricately connected. Now, it is as if
the Epicurean conception of the gods aimed directly at rendering both of
these attitudes impossible. Several indirect accounts (but not a text pro-
ceeding directly from Epicurus) place the gods in “inter-worlds,” in Greek
metakosmia, in Latin intermundia. Epicurus was familiar with the first
word32 but does not apply it to his doctrine of the gods in any of the texts
available to us. However, we do have witnesses that clearly point in that
direction.33 For it is of the greatest importance that the gods be placed in
the “inter-worlds.”34 The gods exist, their existence is never doubted. But
it is essential that they be extremely non-cosmic, that they belong neither
to this world or to another—whether it be this “low” world or a suprace-
lestial world. They must not hang over the things of the world: one reaches
them without climbing or descending, without leaving the world in any
way: if they are between worlds, one can leave one world only by heading
toward another. There are so-to-speak horizontal inter-worlds. Epicurus
does not speak of the supra-worldly existence of his gods. Their inter-
worldly existence does not so much serve to establish their position as,
negatively, to attempt to present them as a counterexample; it serves to
prevent them from sliding into the position of the supra-worldly. Imitat-
ing the gods remains an ideal to propose,35 but it is no longer an imitation
of the world; it is an imitation of their non-cosmic beatitude.
The Other Greece: The Atomists 
LU C R E T I U S
The Latin poet places his writing in the wake of Epicurus, but he does
more than simply give a versified translation of him. We find elements in
Lucretius that are missing in his mentor, although we are unable to say
with complete certainty whether they are original. Among them one finds
a critique of that Stoic providentialism according to which the world was
made to serve as a dwelling-place for man. Lucretius argues that the earth
includes vast expanses that are uninhabitable and unfit for cultivation, not
to mention that the largest portion of the globe is covered by water.36
The second point, the temporary nature of the groupings that form
worlds, does not seem to have been made explicit by Epicurus, who per-
haps saw in it only a thought-experiment. In Lucretius, on the other hand,
the notion is presented emphatically, and in an existential manner. The
world is not a stable kosmos. It is experienced as essentially fragile. Its ruin
is possible: “A single day . . . and the mass that has stood firm for many
years will crumble, and with it the structure of the world.”37 It is even pos-
sible that such ruin might be announced by the signs of a decline leading
to a relative infertility in nature.38 Nothing prevents us from thinking that
the end of the world is imminent: “The thing itself will confirm my words,
perhaps, and, after the lands have been strongly shaken, you will soon see
everything break apart.”39 The idea was expressed by other Latin authors,
such as Ovid or the anonymous author of Octavia,40 but especially the poet
of the Etna who, after talking about earthquakes, wrote that they repre-
sent “the most authentic omen that the world must eventually return to its
primitive appearance.”41
This essential fragility of the world prevents us from seeing it as a source
of support or a place of refuge. Thus Epicurean consciousness contains an
element that might be called eschatological. But it includes a specific nu-
ance with respect to the Stoic idea of ekpurōsis or with respect to the aware-
ness of the end of the world found in Judaism and Christianity. Indeed,
on the one hand, the Stoic conflagration is replaced by the cyclic tempo-
rality of the “great year”;42 it is thus foreseen for a date that can be calcu-
lated. The destruction of the world, according to Lucretius, remains un-
foreseeable. One cannot count on the dissolution of the world any more
than one can count on its survival. Moreover, unlike what is supposed by
apocalypses, the soul is also led to perish—not to be judged. Anguish is
caused by the idea that the soul might survive the world, which atomism
renders impossible.
In the Epicurean tradition, the world is something upon which one
 Four Models
must not rely. Human wisdom is not a wisdom of the world. An essentially
non-cosmic wisdom is required. For Epicurus the accent placed on friend-
ship (philia) is not simply a call for harmony; it implies that a connection
between men is more important than a correspondence with cosmic reali-
ties. But there can no longer be any question of ignoring the physical realm.
The path to pre-philosophical wisdoms was henceforth cut off. Wisdom
could no longer be acosmic; since it came after the Platonic attempt to ed-
ify a wisdom of the world, it was henceforth to be metacosmic.
The Other Greece: The Atomists 
Chapter 
Other than Greece:
The Scriptures
The vision of the world I am attempting to reconstruct is not only the de-
velopment of ideas born in Greece—a name that designates both a coun-
try and an all-encompassing attitude. That vision has roots in “Jerusalem”
as well as in “Athens,” and as regards Islam, in Mecca and Medina. A de-
termined attitude toward the world can be found in this second, non-
Greeksource, an attitude that became a component of the synthesis that
was formed at the end of Antiquity, and which I will describe; but that at-
titude also served as a counterpoint to it.
As we know, the Bible does not constitute a single text, but is an entire
library made up of books whose literary genres, authors, and the eras in
which they wrote all differ. Thus it would be useless to attempt to hy-
postasize something like a “Biblical vision of the world.” The unity of the
Bible does not reside in the text itself, but in the experience of the people
of Israel. That experience constitutes the common background upon
which and in the light of which the texts have been continuously read and
reread. Furthermore, the intention of the Biblical authors was only rarely
to form an explicit vision of the world. Such a vision in most cases appears
only as scenery. The Bible doesn’t contain any unified cosmological doc-
trine; rather it provides various insights, which we will examine in succes-
sion. I will limit myself here to a few texts, chosen because they seem to
best represent the points on which the Bible provides elements respond-
ing to the question at hand.1
T H E O L D T ES TA M EN T
On the whole the Old Testament provides the same vision of the structure
of the physical universe as is found in the civilizations of the ancient Near
East.2 Most of the time this cosmography remains subordinate to the tales
for which it provides only an implicit framework; a cosmography is only
rarely presented for itself, as in the vast panorama in Psalm , which
comes close, as we know, to the Egyptian hymn to Aton.3 The object of
the Old Testament authors was not to indulge in physics, but to dispense
religious teachings.4 Even an evocation of the wonders of the world opens
up onto praise of the God of Israel. Thus Psalm  continues the assertion
that “the heavens are telling the glory of God (El),” by praising the law of
the God of Israel (YHWH). And this is indeed the central and primary
goal of the texts of the Old Testament: to establish and recall the exclusive
covenant between the people of Israel and their God, who gave them the
land upon which they settled.
Such teaching however, affects the way the world is represented, and
precisely because it does not have direct bearing on it. The exclusivity of
the cult of the God of Israel indeed demanded the condemnation of the
other cults in the land of Canaan. Those cults for the most part wor-
shipped agrarian and pastoral deities, lords of rain and fertility. Later a
new adversary appeared, the cult of celestial deities imported from Assyr-
ian religion.5 Now the prophets’ protests were directed toward the cult of
the stars, specifically that of the sun ( Jeremiah :; Ezekiel :). To direct
a kiss to the Sun or the Moon was a sin ( Job :–). Later the empha-
sis was redirected from criticism of the cult of the stars to that of the fool-
ishness of those who, admiring the beauty of creation, were unable to rec-
ognize the craftsman who created it (Wisdom of Solomon :–).
The polemics against other gods, both earthly and celestial, implies
that they were seen as comprising a unit, if only in order to be rejected in
one fell swoop. Consequently, the common realm that underlies both
earthly and heavenly things, in spite of the immense difference between
them (what resemblance is there between animals and stars?), had neces-
sarily to come to the fore as such. That common realm was something like
“nature.” Thus the idea of nature was not unique to Greece; but Greece did
have the distinction of having made nature into a theme and thus to have
named it, by contrasting nature to artifice and the conventional.6 But Is-
rael, too, situated nature opposite another entity which was at first inde-
terminate and was nothing other than the empty place kept vacant for its
jealous God.
Other than Greece: The Scriptures 
A. The Moral Order of the World
We have seen that the notion of a correspondence between the physical
and the moral was present in Greece, but that it came from elsewhere. It
should not be surprising to note that that idea was also found in ancient
Israel. It came out of the pre-Biblical idea that human action exercises an
influence over natural rhythms: to human justice toward the God of Is-
rael—in this case abiding by the rules of worship—there responded a “jus-
tice” of rain and harvest.7
It seems that this correspondence was the object of a reflection that
generalized it. In this regard there is a passage from Second Isaiah, writ-
ten after the exile to Babylon. God is emphasizing at the same time the
stability of his creation and the rectitude of his words: “For thus says the
L, who created the heavens (he is God!), who formed the earth and
made it (he established it; he did not create it a chaos (tohu), he formed it
to be inhabited!): ‘I am the L, and there is no other. I did not speak in
secret, in a land of darkness; I did not say to the offspring of Jacob, ‘Seek
me in chaos (tohu).’ I the L speak the truth (dōber s�édeq), I declare what
is right (maggid meyšarim).’” (:–). The text begins by asserting, with-
out belaboring the point, the identity of the creator: the God who created
the heavens is the same one who created the earth. The God of Israel does
not create the world without giving it maximal consistency. To create is to
establish firmly, to install forever. Creation is the result of an irrevocable
decision, a promise from God. The God of creation is as faithful and wor-
thy of faith as the God of the Covenant. His word therefore has the same
stability as his creation. What he says and what he does are mutually con-
firmed. God does not speak in secret (see :), and yet he is hidden (see
:). It is not in the chaos preceding creation that he must be sought, pre-
cisely because that chaos was overcome by the order of creation. One must
seek him in the order of the created world, in what is intelligible in that
world. The stability that the God of Israel introduces into creation is a
preparation that enables one to understand his historical word. His “word”
perhaps designates the gift of the Law on Mount Sinai. This is what me-
dieval commentators readily assumed.8 But regardless of the content of
God’s communication, it is remarkable that the communication takes
place in the form of words. God manifests himself by speaking, not by in-
fusing some unspeakable experience—drunkenness, desire, a state
of heightened consciousness. Unlike the ecstatic cults of “idols,” God did
not speak to troubled feelings, but to the clarity of the intelligence and
 Four Models
of the heart. He thus agreed to place himself on the same level as that upon
which man might respond, and to encourage freedom. Ultimately his
words possess a rectitude that is not only of a speculative nature, but is also
practical. What he says is “correct,” like the result of an exact calculation,
but also reflect a decent attitude. His words are “right,” in the double sense
of righteousness and exactness.
Here we witness the appearance of what might be called a triangle of
rationalities: there is a logos present in creation, in the history of God with
his people (the words of the prophets), and in moral consciousness. And
these three dimensions are mutually confirmed. (a) The unshakable perma-
nence of what the Greeks called phusis is akin to the historical and evolving
word of the Covenant, since Creation is the first stage of the economy of
salvation: the world is saved from chaos as Israel is saved from the Red Sea.
(b) The order (in the sense of “regularity”) that the sky and the earth ob-
viously follow reflects the order (in the sense of “commandment”) that the
conscience gives in the secret depths of the heart: the universe is not per-
manent as that which rests on itself, but as that which is established, settled.
It is the image of the constancy of love, of the faithfulness of the creator.
(c) The Law given in historyreflects the aspirations of our conscience. It does
not invite ecstatic disturbances, but encourages a reflective choice of life.
The idea of creation was formulated along the lines of these notions:
when the wise men of Israel reflected on the universe that surrounded
them or, in any case, on what they knew about it, they imagined a creation
that was not the result of the work of God, let alone the result of a com-
bat between God and some primitive monster, but of speech. That which
is to be created does not resist divine speech, but allows itself be brought
into existence by it. The psalmist comes to this conclusion: “By the word
of the Lord the heavens were made” (Psalm :). Later Philo uncovered
the principle of creation and gave it a Greek name that evokes a thousand
resonances: logos.
Creation conceived in this way is above all a production. The position
in being of that which is is illustrated by an entire gamut of craftsmanlike
images: modeling of clay, foundation of a house, the unfolding of fabric,
etc, are mentioned in turn. And yet creation is also the instilling of a
meaning through a word and the attachment of a value: the creative word
is the word of justice. In this way it unites the two principles, artifice and
convention, which contrasted with the Greek phusis. And in Israel, as well,
a concept developed that was also in contrast to their union—“nature.”
The “world,” in the Greek sense of kosmos, is what it is thanks to the order
Other than Greece: The Scriptures 
it manifests. The world of the Old Testament was produced with wisdom
(h� ōkhmah),9 but that wisdom did not belong to man. There was indeed a
wisdom of the world, but its subject was God, not man.
B. Devaluing the World in Favor of “History”
The first ordered description of what we call “nature” can be found at the
beginning of the Bible, in the first of the two creation stories that open
Genesis. This story is far from being the oldest text in the Bible; on the
contrary, it was most probably written after the Exile. It deserves a metic-
ulous analysis, for despite its apparent simplicity, the text is extremely
complex.10
I will comment here only on the account of what occurred on the fourth
day: “And God said, ‘Let there be lights (ma’or) in the firmament of the
heavens to separate the day from the night; and let them be for signs and
for seasons and for days and years, and let them be lights in the firmament
of the heavens to give light upon the earth.’ And it was so. And God made
the two great lights, the greater light to rule the day, and the lesser light to
rule the night; he made the stars also. And God set them in the firmament
of the heavens to give light upon the earth, to rule over the day and over
the night, and to separate the light from the darkness. And God saw that
it was good. And there was evening and there was morning, a fourth day”
(Genesis :–). This text is situated within a general movement in
which the Creator delegates more and more of his power to what he has
created. This creative power is a power of separation: after having sepa-
rated the light and darkness on the first day, on the second he creates the
firmament whose function is to separate the waters above and the waters
below. Here we see that the primary task of God—the separation on the
very first day between light and darkness—is conferred upon the entities
that were created on the fourth day (see :). Those entities are not called
by their names, they have no personality. The firmament is a lamppost, the
stars are simple lamps that God places after lighting them, or (this is the
literal meaning, contained in the verbal schema of the names of instru-
ments applied here to the root ’) “instruments to illuminate,” “lumi-
naria.”11 They are, quite obviously, the Sun and the Moon. The prophets
readily call them by their names: “The L, who gives the sun for light
by day and the fixed order of the moon and the stars for light by night” ( Je-
remiah :). Here, the absence of a name suggests a devaluing of the
heavenly bodies. They are called “big” only from the point of view of the
light that they provide. Ibn Ezra notes this fact and explains it: the Sun
 Four Models
and the Moon are viewed solely from the point of view of their light, not
of their size, for, if they are not in themselves the largest of stars, they are
the ones that shed most light upon the earth.12 From our perspective it is
clearly a matter of a discrete dismissal of the “pagan” gods. But it is inter-
esting to wonder why the Bible proceeds in this way. It might have em-
ployed other, more polemical means, as is the case in other passages. Here,
the stars cannot be served, because they themselves serve. They have a
function: to distinguish times (zemanim) and festivals (mo‘adim).13 Space
is put at the service of time. Among the dates thus fixed, festivals are
named first (:), although they are much less apparent than the alterna-
tion of day and night, and even the phases of the moon, which require a
bit more observation. It is indeed that which renders them pertinent—
and more than elsewhere—in Israel. Indeed, those festivals do not cele-
brate the return of natural cycles (seasons, harvests, etc.), but commemo-
rate a single event, one that occurred once and for all. Thus Passover,
which was no doubt originally a pastoral festival, is associated with the Ex-
odus. “Nature” is not envisioned for itself, in its cyclical affirmation of it-
self, but to be the framework for events situated in time. There is nothing
surprising, then, in the fact that nature appears to have been established
through a single event, creation.
A second detail follows in the same direction. Throughout the entire
creation story, the curtain rises on a scene that is to be one of a history. We
see this at the beginning, in a detail that at first appears pointless: the Spirit
of God that initially hovers over (merah� h� éphet) the face of the waters (:).
He does not intervene throughout the entire pageant of creatures, but re-
mains like an unfulfilled threat or promise. This is because he is destined
to land upon a predetermined people, Israel. Only one other passage uses
the same root, � , in the same intensive form, precisely the one that de-
scribes the way in which the god of Israel leads his people: “Like an eagle
. . . that flutters over (yerah� h� eph) its young . . . the L alone did lead [us,
Israel], and there was no foreign god with him” (Deuteronomy :).14
The devaluing of celestial bodies was intended to extirpate the worship
of the stars. The cult of the stars is forbidden in a very explicit command-
ment in Deuteronomy: “And beware lest you lift up your eyes to heaven,
and when you see the sun and the moon and the stars, all the host of
heaven, you be drawn away (niddah� ta) and worship them and serve them,
things which the LORD your God has allotted to all the peoples under the
whole heaven. But the L has taken you, and brought you forth out of
the iron furnace, out of Egypt, to be a people of his own possession, as at
this day.”15 The expression to describe misguidance and the cult of foreign
Other than Greece: The Scriptures 
gods, “to be drawn away” (niddah� ), is common (see Deuteronomy :).
The prohibition is accompanied by a sentence: whoever bows down before
the sun, the moon, or any other of the host of heaven will be stoned
(Deuteronomy :). As for the Sitz im Leben, one must no doubt think of
the reign of King Josiah—during which Deuteronomy was allegedly “re-
discovered.” King Josiah, a pious Yahwist, eliminated those who made sac-
rifices in high places, “those also who burned incense to Baal, to the sun,
and the moon, and the constellations, and all the host of the heavens” (
Kings :), and destroyed their places of worship. The quoted text is one
justification for that policy. The most interesting point is clearly the rea-
son provided, which is, however, not clear in itself: one can understand
that thestars were given to all people throughout the world, all the stars
spreading their influence indiscriminately over all of humanity.16 But one
can also understand that they were spread out among all people in such a
way that each people would be under the protection of a specific constel-
lation or planet, and of the angels placed in charge of them—with the ex-
ception of Israel, whom YHWH personally watched over. This idea is
found elsewhere in Deuteronomy :ff. (“sons of angels,” Septuagint
reading). The idea was eagerly adopted later, among the rabbis of the Tal-
mud (eyn mazzal le-Israel) as well as among the Church Fathers.17 In the
Middle Ages that is the way Ibn Ezra, for example, interpreted the pas-
sage.18 Furthermore, if the stars had been given to all peoples, what was the
reason for that? Simply to illuminate them? Or so that they would be their
gods, to tempt them in that way? Rashi favored the first interpretation, but
discusses the second in some detail: “He did not prevent them from wan-
dering, from following them, but he made them slide due to their vain
words, to chase them from the world.”19 According to rabbinical tradition,
there was an addition to the Greek of the Septuagint to dispel any ambi-
guity in favor of the first interpretation.20
Whatever the case may have been, the heavenly bodies belong to all
peoples, whereas the Law was given only to Israel. Consequently, the Law
was not to be found in the sky (Deuteronomy :), which covers the en-
tire oikoumenē without favoring any particular historical unit. Thus the
passage perhaps constitutes the first appearance—not literally, of course—
of the ideas of nature and history. It deals with that which exists every-
where in the same way, with what is characteristic of that which is by na-
ture: “That which is by nature is unchanging and everywhere has the same
strength (dunamis).”21 It was long known that celestial phenomena belong
to that realm, and there are texts in which that fact is reflected: the sun, the
moon, the sky, the earth, and the sea are common to all but receive differ-
 Four Models
ent names.22 One would therefore expect that constant phenomena, those
that exist everywhere and forever, and thus for all peoples, would be more
important than an event, datable and localized, that concerns only one
group of human beings. Yet the exact opposite is true here. The relation-
ship to the Absolute does not pass through “nature,” but through “history.”
It is the intervention of the God of Israel, a datable and localized inter-
vention, that singles out the Jewish people. This idea would persist in Ju-
daism, for example in the writings of Judah Halevi.23
C. Apocalyptic
The facts of nature were introduced into history in such a radical way that,
later in the history of Israel, thinkers came to believe that those facts, or in
any case, their present state, would exist only for a time. The sky and the
earth would perish, would wear out, would change. Prophets announced
the destruction of the heavens and the earth, indeed the creation of new
heavens and a new earth.24
The intertestamental literature, outside the Jewish and Christian canons,
further emphasizes this aspect of things. Although medieval thinkers were
only slightly aware of it, having received from the Bible only the selection
of writings that make up the Old and New Testaments, this literature
nonetheless is interesting in itself. It assumes a composite cosmology, one
that had already entered into the orbit of Hellenism but that was marked
by Babylonian and Persian representations.25 One can find several new
themes in it, such as a certain superiority of earth over heaven: men are
worth more than angels—note, it is on earth that the story of God and his
people is played out.26 And again, a theme that would be taken up
throughout the Middle Ages with much fanfare: the idea that Abraham
discovered the uniqueness of God through astronomical considerations,
an idea found for the first time in the second century ... in the book of
Jubilees.27
Apocalyptic literature contains a teaching about the world: “the age is
hastening swiftly to its end” ( festinans festinat saeculum pertransire).28 This
literature presents the devaluing of the stars by representing those paragons
of regularity as subjected to disorder,29 and by envisioning something like
a dismissal of the spirits responsible for governing them. Moreover, it also
had an influence on the New Testament. The message of Jesus, who an-
nounced the coming of the reign of God, was formulated, by himself or by
the early Christian community, using the vocabulary of apocalyptic, which
was itself not exempt from Greek influence. Thus the description of the
Other than Greece: The Scriptures 
end of the world in  Peter (:–) is expressed in the Stoic vocabulary of
the final conflagration.
T H E N E W T ES TA M EN T
A. The Words of Jesus
In the teachings of Jesus one finds very little concerning “nature.” In the
apocalyptic addresses attributed to him, the devaluing of the stars already
extant in the Old Testament is translated along the lines of an event, like
an announcement of their temporary nature. Physical phenomena are in-
cluded among eschatological signs, the sun darkens, the moon no longer
sheds its light, the stars fall from the sky, the powers of the sky are shaken
(Matthew :). The vocabulary and the arsenal of images are those tra-
ditionally associated with apocalyptic. But that which was only a more or
less long-term forecast became the announcement of an imminent event
which required an urgent decision.
At the same time a physical image is used to express that urgency, in two
parallel passages on the signs of the times: Matthew :–, and Luke
:–—the latter interestingly juxtaposing “the sky and the earth,” both
in contrast to the kairos. Jesus is asked for a sign from heaven. Which
means, according to the euphemism that avoids naming the God of Israel
directly: from God. He replies by harshly rejecting the pious metaphor
and uses the word “sky” in the literal sense. There is then a list of examples
of inferences from meterological occurrences (the sky is red, thus the
weather will be fair; the clouds are gathering, thus it will rain). But the
meaning is reversed: the regularity of meteorological phenomena is no
longer an example of the stability of the cosmos. It functions as an image
of the sureness of the eschatological coming of God. The reasoning no
longer leads from the present to the future within a cyclical nature; it opens
up onto an absolute future.
The relationship with nature takes a paradoxical turn. One passage in-
vites the consideration of natural phenomena, in this case living things,
birds in the sky that should be watched (emblepein), the lilies of the field
that should be studied (katamanthanein).30 We are close here to an exhor-
tation to imitate the moral qualities attributed to certain animals, found in
the Bible and elsewhere.31 But the recommended behavior—not to be
concerned with one’s food or clothing—is certainly not an imitation of the
makeup of natural beings or even their activity, but solely their relation-
ship of absolute dependency upon the goodness of God.
Another passage offers the same teaching, but from the opposite point
 Four Models
of view. Here we are told to love our enemies and thereby to imitate God,
who makes his sun shine and his rain fall indiscriminately upon the just as
well as the unjust (Matthew :). One must not imitate the sun, the tra-
ditional image of good before and after the New Testament, but God. One
must be perfect like the Father, not like his creatures. Unlike in the Timaeus,
the creature enables the Creator to be known (Romans :), whereas Plato
never suggests this. But the creature itself is not an object of imitation.
There is something more stable than the world, something that will not
only survive its upheaval, but against which the world measures up, in-
deed, that createdit: “Heaven and earth will pass away, but my words will
not pass away.”32 This sentence seems to be echoed in a commandment ad-
dressed to the disciples. I will indulge myself with an explication: “But I
say to you, Do not swear at all, either by heaven, for it is the throne of God,
or by the earth, for it is his footstool.”33 The phrase is situated within the
context of a rabbinical discussion: “the sky and the earth” being able to
designate either the sky and the earth themselves, or their Creator, the
path is ambiguous and therefore is not binding.34 Philo emphasized that
rather than explicitly invoking the primary Cause, it was better to name
the entire world.35 Human speech cannot lean on anything of this world,
for the things of the world belong to God who created them. To claim that
one can stick to one’s word as long as the earth and the sky exist, is to call
upon God to conserve that which he is perhaps about to revoke. Such a
possibility is brought to the fore in the eschatological atmosphere of the
New Testament. One can derive an essential, anthropological consequence
from it: the word must be risked alone. In theology one would say that the
Word cannot come from the world, but is incarnated as it comes from else-
where. Speech is what makes man a “logical” animal. This is above all the
case when it manifests the freedom expressed by the “yes” or the “no,” the
commitment whose definitive character is marked by the irrevocable na-
ture of the given word. One might interpret as follows: man must not at-
tribute that which makes him a man to anything of this world. The hu-
manity of man transcends his worldliness. The Synoptic Gospels therefore
have a strange kinship with Epicurus.
B. The Johannine Writings
With the Fourth Gospel36 and the Epistles of John, there appears a new
meaning of the term “world.” The word no longer designates the object of
a cosmography, physical realities in their ordered totality; this is why that
meaning does not directly concern us. We should however take a quick
Other than Greece: The Scriptures 
look at the meaning, for two reasons: first, because in the history of West-
ern thought it has never ceased to interfere with the sense upon which I
am basing the present study; and second, because it presents a philosoph-
ical pertinence itself, wherefore I will need to return to it later.37
In the writings of John the use of the Greek word for “world,” kosmos,
is in the same vein as the meaning that the Hebrew ’olam was beginning
to have at the time. “World” first designates human life. The expression
“to enter into the world” is found in the familiar Prologue to the Fourth
Gospel, where it is a question, according to interpretations, of “every
man,” or of the divine Word that “was coming into the world” ( John :,
and see :). The writings of John are moreover among the first texts in
which the syntagm “in the world” appears in Greek.38
The world is the creation of God ( John :). But men are separated from
Him. The world is darkness that revels in itself and shuts itself off from
light (:), a lie that denies the truth (:), death that refuses life. It is sub-
jected to Evil, “father of lies” (:f.), “murderer from the beginning” (:),
and therefore “ruler of this world” (:, etc.). The Son, who is the Word,
is a light that comes into the world (:, :), truth, life. He reveals him-
self in the world in order to save it (:). But he does not come from the
world (:). Those who have welcomed him are the objects of the hatred
of the world ( John :). They must therefore adopt something like an
ethics of beings-in-the-world, as Christ defined it just before the “High-
Priestly Prayer”: “In the world you have tribulation (thlipsis); but be of good
cheer, I have overcome the world.” ( John :). This state of affairs is,
however, temporary: “And the world passes away, and the lust of it; but he
who does the will of God abides forever” ( John :). Henceforth faith,
which puts the believer in contact with God, “overcomes the world” (:).
The world here designates the men that inhabit it and the situation in
which they exist. The writings of John contain nothing that reveals an in-
ventory of the contents of the created world, no form of cosmography.
C. The Pauline Writings
I am looking at the writings of Paul39 here, after discussing those of John,
despite their likely chronology given the majority view that the writings of
John are the latest texts in the New Testament. I am doing this for reasons
of substance. Indeed, in Paul’s writings one already finds within the con-
cept of world (kosmos) a movement from the anthropological to the cos-
mographic.
 Four Models
The word “world” sometimes designates the creation (Romans :), or
the inhabited earth (:). But it above all designates human life. To live, for
man, is to “deal with the world” (khrēsthai ton kosmon) ( Corinthians :).
The world, constituted by the concerns of fallen man (the “flesh”), turns
against him and enslaves him (vv. –). To govern himself according to
the order of the world is to define a rule of action, the “wisdom of the
world” (:, –; :, ; :–). And like John, Paul is familiar with the
apocalyptic idea according to which the world “passes away.” If the world
is only temporary, to rely upon it is foolishness: God has “made foolish the
wisdom of the world” (:). In addition to the world, everything that
structures it is accused of foolishness, the Jewish Law as well as Greek phi-
losophy.40 It is thus recommended to Christians: “Do not be conformed
(suskhēmatizesthe) to this world (aiōn) but be transformed by the renewal
of your mind” (Romans :). That which “passes away,” and that to which
one must not conform, is the skhēma of the world: “The form (skhēma) of
the world is passing away” ( Corinthians :). The skhēma is not the im-
age as a simple representation, as a “vision of the world”; the word desig-
nates the image that enables a practice, the one that enables one to “have
a hold on life” insofar as it makes the world hold (ekhein). The idea of
something like a structure of the world thus appears, accompanied by a
cosmography.
It is implicit in the Christology of the Captivity Letters: the death of
Christ establishes contact with God, an access to Him (Ephesians :),
which no longer goes through the elements of the world. The world has
in fact entered under the control of “worldly” powers that consider them-
selves independent from God and therefore are evil. This is the case with
what Paul calls the “power of the air” (:). But those powers are unaware
of God’s plan. In particular, the coming of Christ is unknown to them
(:, :, :). They are consequently stripped of their sovereignty by
Christ ( Corinthians :).
The cosmic dimension of salvation appears clearly in a passage in which
the overall context is a simultaneous critique of astrology and of the at-
tachment to the Jewish festivals whose dates are determined by the move-
ment of the moon and the sun. Those are two ways of being under the in-
fluence of the celestial bodies which are, in the world, what is most cosmic.
But they are also what is most rudimentary in the world: “When we were
children we were slaves to the elemental spirits (stoikheia) of the universe”
(Galatians :).41 They were our tutors whose care we have now left—per-
haps this is the first appearance of the idea of an adult age of humanity, an
Other than Greece: The Scriptures 
emancipation. “Now that you have come to know God, or rather to be
known by God, how can you turn back again to the weak and beggarly el-
emental spirits (stoikheia), whose slaves you want to be once more?” (v. ).
Placed back through baptism into Christ himself, we are dead with him to
the elemental spirits of the world: “If with Christ you died to the elemen-
tal spirits (stoikheia) of the universe, why do you live as if you still belonged
to the world?” (Colossians :–).The writings of Paul thus contain a cosmography. But it remains im-
plicit, and it hardly needs to be made explicit: on the one hand, because
Paul adopts the image of the world of his time, and, on the other, because
it only serves as a backdrop. That which makes up the physical universe is
significant only because it is led into the drama of salvation. And the story
is in fact that of it being put out of circulation.
. . .
Thus, with the New Testament the “wisdom of the world” is named ex-
plicitly for the first time. But this is for the purpose of being immediately
rejected and deemed foolish. The wise man is indeed he who knows how
to read the signs of the world. But those signs are “signs of the times”
(Matthew :); they are read in relation to a world that passes away, and
they designate, beyond that world, the historical intervention of its creator.
T H E KO RA N
The sacred Book of Islam42 is different from those of Judaism and Chris-
tianity in more than one way. In particular, the two Testaments are com-
posites and were written over a long period of time—several centuries for
the Old Testament, and several decades for the New Testament. The Ko-
ran, however, has a unity that dates from its origins: a single author—Al-
lah,43 for the Muslims, and Muhammad for others—and it was composed
over a period of around twenty years, although the posthumous assembly
of its elements occurred over a longer period. It is therefore not surprising
that we find a rather unified doctrine in it. On the other hand, as we have
known for some time, the Koran develops many of the elements found in
the earlier sacred Books and the Apocrypha that reached Muhammad
through different sources, both oral and written.44 The principal elements
of his vision of the world thus adopt certain givens from the Old and New
Testaments but place the emphasis elsewhere, which has given rise, in later
Muslim tradition, to somewhat original developments.
 Four Models
A. The World as Creation
The idea of the world is not clearly present in the Koran. The borrowed
word (from Aramaic), ‘ālam, which renders it in Classical Arabic, is found
in the Koran only in the plural, and not in the usual form, ‘awālim, but as
‘alamūn, which designates the inhabitants of the world and men in partic-
ular. The recurring form, rabb ’ul-’alamı̄n, traditionally rendered as “Lord
of the worlds” or “of the universe,” probably means “Lord of men.”45
The unnamed “world” is all of the objects created by Allah, which is
tautological, as Allah alone can create; the deities of the idolaters are not
capable of creating, not even a fly. Allah creates tirelessly. Indeed, to cre-
ate he need only say “So be it!” to something, and it is.46 As in Genesis,
Creation takes place in six days. According to one passage, the earth was
created in two days.47 Several others show Allah creating, then sitting on
his throne.48 Allah can add anything he likes to his creation. The idea of a
creation continuing through providence is perhaps present where it is said
that Allah “ordains all things [in the sense of commandment]” (yudabbiru
’l-’amr).49 It even seems that the Koran, which does not contain the Bib-
lical ideal of a sabbatical rest for God after his work of creation, does not
distinguish initial creation and the maintenance of the created through
providence. Thus Allah “keeps the heavens and the earth from falling.”50
The object of the creative act is not subsumed under a single term. As
in the Bible, it is often designated as “heaven and earth,” to which is often
added “that which is between them” or “the stars.” Lists can be summed
up by “all things,” this last expression also appearing alone.51 The excla-
mation “[He] who excelled in the creation of all things” recalls the Priestly
tale of creation.52 But there is an essential, though subtle, difference: the
totality in the Bible is additive, and here it is distributive; according to the
Bible the object of admiration is the entirety of creatures, in the connec-
tion that gives them their consistency; according to the Koran it is every
creature viewed individually, without any connection to the rest of cre-
ation, indeed, without any link other than that with Allah.
The structure of the world is portrayed marginally alongside a few
specifications concerning its production by Allah. Thus the heavens do
not rest on any visible pillar. One passage reiterates the idea of an initial
separation of the sky and the earth. Another suggests a sketch of a spher-
ical cosmography53 that distinguishes seven heavens to which seven earths
correspond.54 It seems that the stars are a barrier against the demons that
are enclosed by it.55
Other than Greece: The Scriptures 
B. The Signs
The first suras, dictated in Mecca, begin by using the phenomena of cre-
ation as testimony in an oath. They then turn to the apocalypse and an-
nounce a cosmic catastrophe, an earthquake, an opening of the sky or a se-
ries of extraordinary phenomena.56
The Koran adopts the apocalyptic transposition of the “signs of the
times,” which already appeared in the Gospels,57 turning natural regulari-
ties into signs of a definitive irruption of Judgment Day: Allah, who cre-
ated man from a drop of semen, will of course be able to resuscitate him;
Allah, through the rain, makes vegetation appear, and that is how he will
make the resuscitated come out of the earth. He who had no difficulty cre-
ating the sky will have none resuscitating man.58 In a general way, natural
phenomena are proof of divine goodness.59
The theme of “signs” (‘āyāt), no doubt announced during the first Mec-
can period, became pervasive during the second.60 Let us cite a few ex-
amples: “Surely in this there are signs for men of judgement;” “Surely in
the heavens and the earth there are signs for the faithful; in your own cre-
ation, and in the beasts He scatters far and near, signs for true believers; in
the alternation of night and day, in the sustenance God sends down from
heaven with which He resurrects the earth after its death, and in the mar-
shalling of the winds, signs for men of understanding.” The idea is summed
up in a sentence: Allah “created the heavens and the earth to establish the
truth. Surely in this there is a sign for true believers.”61
We can describe the theme by looking at a few points: (a) Concrete re-
ality is a language through which Allah speaks to man. It is called, most of
the time, a sign, but also a reminder, a memory-jogger (d� ikrā). (b) Man can
decipher it and deduce the existence and the generosity of Allah from it.
(c) Still he must exhibit intelligence (nuhan) and “heart” (lubb). (d) Thus
he must make use of those faculties and listen (sama‘a), reflect (tafakkara),
understand (‘aqala, tad� akkara, or id� d� akara) or believe (’āmana).62 We are
invited to “consider” (nazara) the kingdom of heaven and earth, as Abra-
ham did, he who deduced the oneness of the Creator from it—a theme
that came from Judaism.63 Thus the sura “the Bee” presents a vast tableau
of creation: heaven and earth, man, the animals, rain and the vegetation it
causes to grow, the stars, the earth with its varied colors, the sea with its
fish and pearls, the mountains; it continues the theme farther on when it
repeats the phrase: “for men of understanding” three times.64
In this respect it does not appear that Muhammad distinguished the
“natural” from the “cultural.” Indeed, the signs invoked could belong to the
 Four Models
most varied realms and be the objects of lists that juxtapose phenomena
whose ontological statuses were completely different. This is the case with
what is “natural,” “historical,” and “artificial.”65 Natural regularities are on
the same level as the gesta Dei of history. Thus the sura “Yā Sı̄n” mentions
as signs the fertility of the earth, the night, and the sun, then the story of
Noah’s Ark. The idea of “sign” encompasses historical reminders, in par-
ticular those of the Bible: the hospitality (philoxeny) of Abraham orNoah’s
Ark. It forms the refrain for the sura “The Poets.”66 The historical is con-
stantly juxtaposed to examples taken from nature.67 And the same expres-
sions, for example “reminder” (d� ikrā), designate the roles of both natural
signs and historical tales.68
Moreover, artifacts are just as much “signs” as are meteorological phe-
nomena or those relating to vegetation. This is quite specifically the case
of boats ( fulk), which are cited no fewer than sixteen times.69 It is true that
the emphasis is placed less on the vessel as manufactured object than on
the way in which the water was made capable of floating such a massive
object. If this is so, the idea is found in Saint Ephraem, who perhaps in-
directly influenced Muhammad.70 Allah put the sea at man’s disposal so
that boats could sail on it; he causes the wind that moves them to blow; he
brings the lull and ensures them a peaceful journey.71
C. Man
Man, the reader of those signs, is a favored creature: Allah gave him a har-
monious form. That which has been created is subject to man’s use, in-
cluding the sun and the moon.72 But what is unique to man is only rarely
compared with what relates to the cosmological. Nor does it appear that
the world and the “self ” are clearly distinguished, as is suggested by the
juxtaposition, in a single series, of natural phenomena and the soul. This
is very clear in: “On earth, and in yourselves ( fi anfusikim, literally “in your
souls”) there are signs for firm believers (li-’l-mūqinı̄na).”73 It seems that
this distinction is practiced elsewhere, as in the famous verse in which Al-
lah is supposed to say: “We offered Our trust (’amāna) to the heavens, to
the earth and to the mountains, but they refused the burden and were
afraid to receive it. Man undertook to bear it.” But the rest of the verse,
which emphasizes man’s injustice and ignorance, seems to qualify the
privileged status first recognized in man.74 Every created thing, and not
only man, adores Allah—even the mountains.75
Does the Koran contain a doctrine on the duty of man who conceives that
duty on the basis of his relationship to the physical universe? In several
Other than Greece: The Scriptures 
places the Koran insists on the idea that creation was not accomplished in
jest: “It was not in jest (lā ‘ibı̄na) that We created the heavens and the earth
and all that lies between them. We created them to reveal the truth (bi-’l-
h� aqqi).” “It was not in sport that We created the heaven and the earth and
all that lies between them. Had it been Our will to find a diversion (lahw),
We could have found one near at hand.” “It was not in vain (bāt� ilan) that
We created the heavens and the earth and all that lies between them. That
is what the unbelievers (z� ann) think.”76 It is possible that the recurring for-
mula according to which Allah created, bi-’l-h� aqqi, should also be trans-
lated in the other passages as “seriously,” and not by “in truth,” as one might
also do.77 It is not impossible that the Koran’s insistence on the seriousness
of human life and its rejection of a hedonistic interpretation of that life
goes hand in hand with the very seriousness of creation. However, it is un-
likely that we are dealing here with a metaphysical affirmation of the final
goal of creation, which would contrast with theories on the playful nature
of the being.78 It is affirmed alongside the idea of a fixed amount of time
(’ajal musammā).79 This is why I wonder whether the text should be con-
sidered in a judicial context80 and it should be understood that Allah did
not make the world without collateral, but as an investment that would
show returns.
In a single passage, and one often commented on, Allah announces that
in man he will create a xalı̄fa on earth. We have fairly recently come to be-
lieve that this should be interpreted as saying that man received the dig-
nity of “Vicar of Allah” (“Caliph”) on earth. But the Arabic word thus ren-
dered signifies “successor,” more specifically someone who succeeds the
owner of land that has escheated—which cannot be the case for Allah. It
is therefore not impossible that the underlying idea is that man succeeds
as occupier of the earth—the angels.81 It is out of the question that Allah
delegate anything to man. We can see this when we compare the Koranic
and the biblical versions of the same scene: according to the Koran, Allah
teaches Adam the names of all things; but the biblical God names only five
things (day/night, sky/earth/sea) and leaves it to Man to name the ani-
mals, thus agreeing to learn something from his creature.82
. . .
I would now like to highlight the elements common to the Scriptures con-
sidered to be revealed, and sketch something like an “Abrahamic” model.
The world is created by a good God, who affirms at every stage of creation
that what he has just freely brought into being is “good,” indeed in his or-
dered edifice “very good” (Genesis ). But the phenomena that seem most
 Four Models
sublime within the physical world are not those of the highest level. They
are in fact of lesser value compared with man, whom they serve. Man there-
fore is not meant to govern himself according to the phenomena of the
world but must seek elsewhere for a model of behavior. In the final anal-
ysis, that model is God himself. God manifests himself less through his
creation than through a more direct intervention: He can either give the
world his law, as in Judaism and Islam, or he can indeed enter into that
world through incarnation, as in Christianity.
Other than Greece: The Scriptures 
Chapter 
The Other Other: Gnosticism
T H E LA S T M O D EL
The fourth and last model I will now describe is Gnosticism or, more ex-
actly, an aspect of Gnosticism: anticosmism.1 The word “Gnosticism”
designates a complex group of movements that do not in fact share a com-
mon doctrinal corpus. Their unity is perhaps only artificial, but in them
one can identify something like a common “sensibility,” and this is what is
of interest to us here. Furthermore, this Stimmung goes beyond the bound-
aries of Gnosticism, coloring the entire Mediterranean world around the
second century .., a period that has been characterized as an “age of anx-
iety,” owing perhaps to a “failure of nerve.”2
I have chosen to place Gnosticism at the end of this gallery of cosmo-
logical models, first of all for simple reasons of chronology. Indeed, it does
not appear that the Gnostic movement predated the Christian era, nor
even the destruction of the Temple of Jerusalem in  .. Gnosticism oc-
curred after the birth of Christianity or, at least, is situated after the apoc-
alyptic movements of the end of Old Testament Judaism. It is possible
that Gnosticism was one of the responses to those movements. I will not
deal with the contested issue of its origins. They are perhaps Judaic, and
are in any case post-Judaic. Gnosticism is also post-biblical for funda-
mental reasons: it is a response to certain theses in biblical theology; its
mythology is an inversion of the Jewish exegesis of the beginning of Gen-
esis.3 A somewhat negative valuation of the world is present in certain
Jewish sects and perhaps even in Qumran.4
Gnosticism also postdates the philosophers. It is possible to find various
aspects of Greek thought echoed in Gnosticism. And the accent Gnosti-
cism places on knowledge is Greek.5 Certain Gnostic traits are even pres-
ent in Platonism, first in Plato himself—out of whom, according to Plot-
inus, comes all that is good in Gnosticism.6 And this is corroborated by the
presence of a passage by Plato, translated into Coptic, in the Gnostic li-
brary of Nag Hammadi.7 The Platonic themes that enable a Gnostic rein-
terpretation include the demiurge and the idea that he might not be good.8
The reality of the presence of the soul in the world inevitably leads to a
problem. The presence of a soul in it is the consequence of a fall, the rea-
son for which is unclear in middle Platonism, includingRémi
Brague on this remarkable book. His gracious and encouraging help has
been invaluable. The Wisdom of the World, which reveals the astounding
breadth of the author’s scholarship as he presents the ideas of the most di-
verse range of thinkers, as well as his own insights into the concepts in-
troduced, has been a challenge—and an honor—to translate.
The author has reviewed the translation chapter by chapter, made im-
portant corrections and suggestions, and has provided help in locating
published English-language translations of the many and varied texts he
cites. When published translations could not be found, I have translated
directly—unfortunately, often second-hand—from the French text.
My heartfelt thanks, once again, to the author.
Introduction
Dr. Watson, having recently moved into an apartment that he was to share
with another lodger by the name of Sherlock Holmes, and having forbid-
den himself—like any good Englishman—to ask his flatmate any personal
questions, attempts to guess Holmes’s profession by making an inventory
of his talents. He is surprised, among other bizarre things, at some of the
facts Mr. Holmes doesn’t know. For example, he hasn’t a clue whether the
Earth turns around the Sun, or vice versa. Once he has been told the an-
swer, Holmes immediately declares that he will hasten to forget it, for such
a fact is useless to him: “What the deuce is it to me? . . . You say that we
go round the Sun. If we went round the Moon it would not make a penny-
worth of difference to me or my work.”1 And what about us? Whether our
work is medicine, crime, or its detection, is it truly useful to know how the
world is made, where the earth upon which we walk really gravitates?
Wouldn’t it be better to know what we are doing on that earth?
This is the question asked by the man on the street (and who among us
is not that person?) when, should the mood strike him, he finds himself in
a “metaphysical” mood. By that question he is asking: What is the mean-
ing of life? Now, the way he asks the question is not without importance.
I propose taking that question seriously, and literally. The question implies
that human life is defined by reference to a physical fact, that it is not only
a presence in an indeterminate world, but situated at a precise location in
that world, a location that is defined in relation to other elements of the
same whole—in this instance, “on earth” and not “in the moon,” or float-
ing around in warm air like Avicenna’s famous “flying man.” At first glance
this simply means that we are alive, and not six feet under the earth, or in
some form of hell. But it is significant that human life appears physically
situated from the start, and situated as such.
It is from this perspective that I wish now to examine the cosmology of
a specific period in the history of thought, that of late Antiquity and its
continuation into the Middle Ages within the three branches of thought
that developed throughout the Mediterranean basin. During this period,
knowing what the physical world truly was was supremely relevant for an-
swering the question, “What are we doing on earth?” In reconstructing an
accomplished vision of the world, I am not inspired by the simple curios-
ity of an antiquarian; I am attempting to situate us, us humans, in the face
of a question that concerns us as much as it concerned our ancestors, a
question that is nothing less, in the final analysis, than that of the nature
of humankind. To know what a human being truly is, he must be exam-
ined in the arena where he most fully realizes his nature, thus where he is
truly most himself.2 Excellence (aretē) is the object of ethics. Anthropol-
ogy is therefore inseparable from ethics.
And so it is my claim that during a long period in ancient and medieval
thought (assuming we can distinguish them here), the attitude that is be-
lieved to enable man to achieve the fullness of his humanity was con-
ceived, at least in a dominant tradition of thought, as being linked to cos-
mology. The wisdom through which man is or should be what he is was a
“worldly wisdom.” The period during which this was so had a beginning
and an end. It thus forms a closed entity, one that can be distinguished
from its prehistory and post-history—the one in which we now exist.
CO S M O G RA P H Y A N D CO S M O G O N Y
I should begin with some clarification, by specifying that I am looking at
the world in the sense of an object of a cosmology, and not in one of the
more common senses in which it only refers either to the inhabited earth,
or to the people who inhabit it—such as in the French “du monde” in the
sense of “people.” Yet it is this very precision that will reintroduce man’s
concern into the heart of the question of the world. I will thus use the con-
cept of “cosmology” in a sense that must be explained. To do this I will dis-
tinguish it from two other terms with which it is often confused. To de-
fine these concepts I will make use of words that are already present in our
vocabulary but will not restrict myself to employing their commonly-held
meanings.
I am therefore making a distinction between cosmography, cosmogony,
and cosmology. The first two terms can be found in ancient Greek, and the
 Introduction
first was preserved without any break in continuity in medieval Latin.3
The third is a later term from scholarly vocabulary, one of those purely-
Greek-looking words that the ancient Greeks never ventured to create.4
By cosmography I mean the drawing or description (graphein) of the
world as it appears at a given moment, with regard to its structure, its pos-
sible division into levels, regions, and so on. This description may, indeed
should, take into account the static or dynamic relationships between the
various elements that make up the world: distances, proportions, etc., as
well as influences, reactions, and so forth. It implies the attempt to un-
cover the laws that govern those relationships. It is therefore a generalized
geography that, thumbing its nose at etymology, does not deal only with
the earth, but with all of the visible universe.
By cosmogony I mean the story of the emergence of things or, perhaps,
the story of cosmogenesis. It explains how things came to form (gignesthai)
the world as we know it, in the structure in which we find it today. The way
in which a given culture conceives of the world obviously influences the
way in which it represents how the world came into being: a cosmogony
serves to explain the world as it is imagined or conceived at a given mo-
ment by a given group of people. Consequently we know of cosmogonies
with very different styles, as varied as the many cosmographies. A cos-
mogony can be mythical, as in the cases of the creation stories found in
most of the so-called “primitive” cultures. This does not prevent those
myths from being rich in thought, indeed, in reflection that may seem pre-
philosophical, as in Hesiod’s Theogony. Genesis tales may also consist of
the partially critical retelling of more ancient myths that have been cor-
rected, sometimes rendered unrecognizable by being absorbed into an-
other tale, in order to serve another doctrine. This is the case of the story
of creation at the beginning of the book of Genesis. A myth can also be
consciously created, in order to illustrate an earlier philosophical theory, as
in Plato’s Timaeus. A cosmogony can also be scientific. In that case it seeks
to reconstruct the process by which the world as we know it today might
have come into being. This occurred first with Galileo,5 and in Descartes’
Traité du monde (), and in Newtonian cosmogonies, such as for ex-
ample Kant’s theory of the sky (). Finally, this is also seen in present-
day astrophysics, regardless of the role that hypothesis must play in it.
It is appropriate to note that the contents of these two concepts have
drawn closer as time has gone by, to the point of being almost indistin-
guishable. Contemporary theories indeed conceive ofin Plotinus, and
it is still hotly debated among various interpreters.9 But beginning with
Plato, a problem appears: the presence of the soul in the world is good for
the world, but bad for the soul. In Timaeus the fall of the soul is the price
to be paid for the perfection of the world: the gods must achieve a perfect
world that thus includes the four types of living beings. But in the begin-
ning only primitive Man is created, a sort of Adam qadmon, who, in prin-
ciple, should be exempt from a fall.10 And the animals can only emerge
from it once man has fallen. Thus Gnosticism remythologized what phi-
losophy had rationalized. In this way it did not only undergo the influence
of philosophy; it was situated explicitly in relation to philosophy, to pro-
vide a response to—and a distance from—it.11
A N T I CO S M I S M
If I feel compelled to speak of Gnosticism here, it is because it also pro-
posed a model of a relationship with the world. What is more, that rela-
tionship seems to be one of the keys to Gnostic thinking, a point that was
made by Hans Jonas, then by Henri-Charles Puech.12 The way in which
Gnosticism views the world indeed explains an entire range of other fea-
tures of the Gnostic mentality. This is the case, for example, of the Gnos-
tic attitude toward the body, following a logic Tertullian observed: if the
body is that through which we are in the world, and if the world is bad,
the body must not be able to be resurrected.13
On this point Gnosticism contrasts both with the “Greek” vision of the
world and with biblical Revelation in its orthodox interpretation, in that
it rejects the postulate common to these two models. These models might
disagree as to the origin of the world, which for the Greeks was eternal
(whether that eternity concerned only matter or also extended to the
arrangement of its parts) but for the followers of biblical religions was cre-
ated. But they are in agreement as to the value of that which exists, that is,
its fundamental “goodness.” That goodness can in turn be due to several fac-
tors. According to the Bible and, with some slight differences, according
The Other Other: Gnosticism 
to Timaeus, it is a consequence of its origins in a perfectly good Creator;
for Aristotle the goodness of the world was connected to its perfect per-
manence; for the Stoics, perfection expressed the world’s identity with
God Himself. But the principle was secure. And it was precisely to that
principle that Gnosticism was diametrically opposed.
It has been argued, against Hans Jonas, that in Gnosticism and the re-
ligions that grew out of it, anticosmism is not present everywhere with the
same intensity. In this view Manicheism seems to have expressed less
harsh attitudes, as can be seen in this text: “The wise men and the ones by
whom the right is chosen are capable of recognizing the boundless and
timeless and unmixed goodness of the Paradise in the limited and tempo-
ral and mixed goodness of the world. And in the same way from the num-
bered and limited evil, which one sees in the world, the numberless and
boundless evil of the hell is recognized, that it (i.e. the numberless evil) ex-
ists. And when one does not see in the world the limited and passing good-
ness and evil, and the mixture of the one with the other (viz. the mixture
of goodness and evil), (then) the commandment to keep far from evil and
to go to the goodness cannot come (in)to the thought of someone.”14
Furthermore, in Manichaeism the world is a machine for salvation, a
mechanism intended to liberate, to gather up, and to purify the Light that
is held captive in it: “The meaning of the world is the redemption that
men [more precisely: the elect] must operate. And insofar as that redemp-
tion . . . is interpreted as a purely physical process, the cosmos in its total-
ity appears henceforth as the bearer and the instrument of that very pro-
cess: from the three “wheels” [the sublunary spheres: water, wind, and fire]
to the two “luminous vessels,” the moon and the sun, to the wheel with
twelve buckets of the zodiac, and to the paradise of light, it forms a gi-
gantic machine, artistically arranged and manipulated, whose goal is the
“renewal” (ahramisn) of the liberated Light. It is thus, in the physico-
mechanical myth, that is presented the submission of the cosmic appara-
tus to the goal which is the redemption of the Light: the earthly world is
no longer, as in the doctrine of Zoroaster, only the scene of the battle
against the world; it is a device to be used to that effect.”15
In Gnosticism itself anticosmism isn’t as uniformly clear, either. It is
clear above all in Marcion; Valentinus, however, represents a cosmogonic
Gnosticism, in which the world is already present in the pleroma and is
thus not entirely evil. Others are more nuanced, such as Hermogenes. In
his Platonistic cosmology, the kosmos indeed deserves its name but pre-
serves a disordered portion of wild matter: the Demiurge “took a part of
the Whole and tamed it (hēmerōse), and left the other carried away in dis-
 Four Models
order. He said that which is tamed is the kosmos, and that the rest will re-
main wild (agrios) and is called matter without order (hulē akosmos).”16 In
the best of all cases the role of the world is pedagogical. This is the case in
Ptolemy: “The spiritual elements, which Wisdom [Achamoth] sows from
the beginning to the present in righteous souls, educated on earth and raised,
and, from the fact that they had been sent as children, having later reached
perfection, will be given as intended to the angels of the Savior.”17
A D EVA LU ED WO R L D
These nuances aside, the fundamental tenor remains a devaluation of the
physical universe. Not even Ioan Couliano can cite a single text in which it
is affirmed that the world is good; at the most he deduces a relative innocu-
ousness about the world.18 He is forced, moreover, to admit that for the
Gnostics the world is an error, useless, and that its final disappearance will
be a liberation.19 A text from Nag Hammadi asserts this explicitly: “The
world (kosmos) came about through a mistake (paraptōma).”20 It is an illusion
(phantasia).21 The world was made by a demiurge who was not the supreme
God, but a being subordinate to him. Different Gnostics can place the ac-
cent on different negative characteristics. For some the demiurge is igno-
rant. Thus for Basilides, the Demiurge does not know that something more
perfect exists above him.22 For others, such as Ptolemy, he is simply evil.23
In classical Hellenism there was an almost unbreakable association be-
tween the beautiful and the good. In Timaeus they constitute two charac-
teristics of the world that were believed to be inseparable and mutually in-
volved—even if that connection appears more problematic when examined
closely.24 In Gnosticism, however, the world could be beautiful, but it is
not good. Indeed, it is material, easily corrupting, incomplete, moving. It
is good (agathos) in that it produces all things, but it is not good as regards
its other aspects, since it is corruptible, moving, and the producer of cor-
ruptible beings. The world is even the epitome of evil (plērōma tēs kakias),
whereas God is the epitome of good.25 The world is the full measure (to
sumpan horos) of evil.26
The bad quality of the world can be related to the fact that it is botched
and thus simply badly made. This is the case in certain texts of the Corpus
hermeticum, in which the fact that the world is bad—the “badness” of the
world, if we like—is not an evil act, an evil deed. But true Gnosticism goes
one step further. In Gnosticism the world is essentially evil. There is an
evil power that reigns in the firmament—that is, exactly where, according
to “classical” Greek thought, Good should be at its highest point.27 One
The Other Other: Gnosticism 
text speaks of the “firmament where the prince of this world lives,” and in
a parallel text we read: “I see Satan seated in the firmament of the sky.”28This is why it is essential that the world disappear entirely: “The All is be-
ing dissolved, both the earthly (things) and the heavenly.”29
The world does indeed display a rigorous and incontestable order, even
a fascinating beauty. But its beauty is devilish, it is a trap intended to se-
duce the soul. And its order serves in fact to make it impossible to escape
it. For the prisoner, to inhabit a well-constructed prison is in fact a cause
for despair rather than one of encouragement. Gnosticism further em-
phasizes the regularity and the power of the kosmos of classical Hellenism,
but while changing its influence from positive to negative.30
CO S M I C T ERRO R
In Manichaeism the world is a place of torture for the Light: the world
is its cross, in a generalized crucifixion.31 For Gnosticism, such is, in any
event, the case for the soul. Plotinus speaks of the huge “drama” (tragōdia)
created by the Gnostics about the dangers that the soul risks in the spheres
of the world.32 And a text from Nag Hammadi indeed says: “We possess
nothing in this world, out of fear that the Domination that has occurred
in the world might retain us in the celestial spheres, those in which uni-
versal death surrounded by individual [deaths] resides.”33 The powers in
the world appear as a source of terror. This is the case in a Greek magical
papyrus which contains an invocation to Ursa Major.34 Or further in an-
other magical text according to which the seven planets are launched in
pursuit of man, who cannot escape their influence.35
A Mandaean text, which in its current form no doubt goes back to the
eighth century, but which brings together more ancient representations,
expresses this sentiment vis-à-vis the physical world.36 The person speak-
ing is described contemplating the entire world above him: not only the
stars, but “the angels who are placed above the sky, who are also placed
above the earth, the twelve signs of the zodiac.” The evocation of the ce-
lestial and terrestrial world, from the angels who preside over the four el-
ements to the trees and the fruit, lead to a questioning concerning origins:
“Who can tell me where they came from, upon what they rely, and upon
what they stand?” The static structure is animated by an ordered move-
ment: the angels who day and night attract the stars turn them into a suc-
cession comparable to a system of recurrences. This regularly alternating
return of celestial phenomena does not provoke the same reactions in men.
On the contrary: “There are many people who rejoice in that, and many
 Four Models
[others] who are troubled by it and say: ‘Why has the day dawned and why
has the morning arrived?’ And that other, nocturnal, recurrence: there are
many people who rejoice in it, and many [others] who are troubled by it,
cry, and say: ‘Why has the night come and why has the moon risen?’” Our
dissatisfaction is comparable to that of Job longing for the night when it is
day, only to then await impatiently for the day to return. We are thus con-
stantly out of phase: no time is favorable. Instability exists in things them-
selves: the stars “change by day and by night, turn and turn again in the sky,
and have no permanence in a place.” Their only consistent trait is negative:
“They produce nothing good for the children of men: they impoverish
some, and enrich others; they cause damage to all; they turn a slave into a
free man, and a free man into a slave.” In addition, stars don’t simply upset
and ruin material situations. Their evil action is deeper, since it extends to
souls, which they plunge into error: “They circumvent the souls of the chil-
dren of men and seduce them, so that they err. They trick them and keep
a good number of their souls for themselves until the final day.” He who
becomes the spectator of a world thus construed trembles and shakes; his
body contracts in a painful spasm, sighs rise in his heart, his legs collapse
beneath him. Considering the situation, he understands his dereliction in
an evil world and concludes: “My older brothers have abandoned me in
this world of evil, they do not come and they do not rescue me from here.”
It is of little importance that this very dark scene is merely the prologue
to a deliverance and that it is a prelude, here as throughout Gnosticism, to
the coming of a Savior. What interests me is the way in which the world
is perceived. It is a place of anguish for the soul: “Pain (ponos) and anguish
(phobos) cover things like rust covers iron.”37 According to a text from Nag
Hammadi, anguish can become as thick as fog.38 Anguish is in fact the raw
material of the world: the world is not only in anguish, it is so to speak “of ”
anguish the way a plank is made of wood. According to the Valentinians,
the Demiurge created evil spirits out of sadness (lupē), animals out of fear
(phobos), “and that which is created out of fright ([ek]plēxis) and out of the
impossibility of escaping it (aporia), those are the elements of the world.”
The same doctrine is voiced by Irenaeus.39
T H E S O U L I N T H E WO R L D
For the “classical” Greeks, our presence in the world did not develop into
a theme, for it went without saying. For the Gnostics, it ceased to be ob-
vious and became a pressing issue that was divided up into a series of ques-
tions: “How are we detained in this dwelling place? How did we come to
The Other Other: Gnosticism 
this place? In what manner shall we depart? How do we have [the] au-
thority of boldness? Why do the powers fight against us?”40
Our presence in the world is conceived through several negative im-
ages, such as nightmare,41 or abandonment: the soul is abandoned in the
world like an aborted fetus in the formless void.42 We were brought into
the world through a violent movement. Our presence in the world is the
consequence of a propulsion.43 The image constantly recurs, as in the well-
known catechism, close to the text that has just been cited: “Who were we?
What have we become? Where were we? Where have we been tossed (pou
eneblēthēmen)? Toward what goal do we hasten? Whence have we been
rescued? What is generation? And regeneration?”44 The image recurs in
the Pistis Sophia;45 among the Naassenes the soul, “thrown (errimenē) to-
ward unhappiness (eleos), laments.”46 Elsewhere the soul pleads: “Rescue
us from the darkness of this world, into which we have been thrown.”47
Granted, the image of a propulsion is not unique to Gnosticism. It can be
associated with the famous Epicurean comparison according to which
man, at birth, is like a castaway washed up (proiectus) onto the shore.48 The
image of the world as something shaken by a storm where thousands are
shipwrecked is also found in Mani.49 However, behind the similarity of
the metaphors, two diametrically opposed representations confront one
another. Indeed, in Lucretius the image serves to show that the world is
not made for man: the world has its own laws that are not regulated upon
the needs of man, who is as if superfluous in it. In Gnosticism it is rather
a question of showing, conversely, that man is not made for the world: man
is too good for the world. The cosmological pessimism of the Gnostics is
balanced by a “dizzying anthropological optimism.”50 The association,
which has become accepted since Hans Jonas, with the concept of “being
thrown” (Geworfenheit) as forged by Heidegger is not truly convincing.51
The world is not our natural habitat. That is why “the good will not en-
ter into the world.”52 Or, if they are in it, they are lost in it. According to Her-
acleion, “that which is unique (oikeion) to the Father—that is, the spirit—
is lost (apolōlenai) in the profound matter (hulē) of wandering (planē).”53
To enter into it is in fact to enter into death, it is less to be born than to
die: “The one who is born of the Mother is led toward death, that is, to-
ward the world (eis thanaton . . . kai eis kosmon).”54 The world is ultimately
not our dwelling place, but either a prison,55 or in any case that whichis not
appropriate or familiar to us, uninhabitable, one might say, at the cost of the
over-translation of the technical term anoikeion.56 The play on words im-
plicit in that which is “unique” (oikeios) and that which is a “dwelling place”
(oikia)—one might think of terms such as “inhabit/habitual,” “familiar”—
 Four Models
is present in Heracleion: that which has fallen into matter is “unique” to
the Father;57 Capernaum ( John :) designates “those extremities of the
world, those material things toward which he descended. And it is because
that place was uninhabitable (anoikeion), it is said, that one says he neither
said nor did anything. When Jesus announced to the centurion: ‘your son
lives,’ he means that ‘he is as he should be (oikeiōos) and appropriately,
without any longer doing what is not appropriate to do (anoikeia).’”58
For the Stoics, it is the evil one who is a stranger in the world, where
the wise man is the good citizen;59 for the Gnostics, in comparison with
the world we are too good not to be strangers in it. This is true first for
Christ, who left the world for that reason. Mani also felt, in relation to
other religious groups, foreign and alone (othneios kai monērēs) in the
world,60 and his isolation indeed corresponded to his ontological situation:
the soul is like a stranger in the world.61 The Gnostic revelation is often
attributed to a Stranger: thus the assumed author of an apocalypse, Seth
the Allogene, and perhaps Elisha ben Abuya, the “Ah� er” (“The Other”) of
the Talmud.62 Gnostic awareness is essentially “foreign awareness” (xenē
gnōsis). Election and its subject are also strangers, for they are supra-cosmic:
“‘I [the soul of the wise man and of the Gnostic] am a stranger (parepidēmos)
and a sojourner (paroikos) among you’ (Genesis :, Psalm :). Basilides
began there to say that the elite of the world are strangers (xenēn tēn eklogēn
tou kosmou), in that they are by nature supra-cosmic (huperkosmion).”63
Feeling a stranger in the world, the soul seeks an exit which will enable it
to leave and return to its true world. According to the Naassenes, Jesus asked
the Father to send him to help the soul. That soul “seeks to flee the bitter
chaos, and does not know where to go.” Elsewhere God is praised, “He who
has thus given man a door in a foreign world.”64 The soul must perceive the
beckoning that comes from elsewhere and that reveals its true nature to it.
The liberation provided by the Savior (who can be Christ) liberates from the
powers of the world, in particular the influence of the stars, suddenly en-
abling one to rise up to the transcendent Father. Thus: “This is why the Lord
descended to create peace, the peace that comes from heaven to earth. . . .
This is why a foreign (xenos) and new (kainos) star has risen, destroying the
former order of the stars (astrothesia), shining with a new and non-cosmic
light (kainōi phōti, ou kosmikōi), and tracing new and salutary paths.”65 One
can note the implicit equivalence between “new” and “extra-cosmic.”
In such a model there can be no question of a “wisdom of the world” in
the sense in which I understand it. Using the expression only surpasses its
pejorative sense as it appears in the writings of Saint Paul.66 It is perhaps
in this sense that it appears in a text from Nag Hammadi: “The wisdom of
The Other Other: Gnosticism 
the world overcame them from the day when it created the sun and the
moon and when it placed its seal on its sky for all eternity.”67 The wisdom
of the world could only be, in the subjective sense of the genitive, the di-
abolical ease with which this world captivates us. The authentic wisdom
of “he who knows,” that of the Gnostic, is the knowledge of ways of evad-
ing, a wisdom of the negation of the world.
. . .
The four models I have just sketched form a system and might be rather
loosely arranged into a tableau with two means of access, by way of the in-
trinsic ontological value of the world and of the interest a knowledge of it
has for man.
In the Timaeus Plato responds in a very positive way to the two ques-
tions about the value and the interest of the world: the world is what is
best, and knowledge of it is supremely interesting, since such knowledge,
and it alone, enables us to reach the fullness of our own humanity. For Epi-
curus, the world such as it is is not bad, but it has no more value than any
other arrangement of atoms; a knowledge of it, in theory, is not indispen-
sable, but it is useful in fact, since it enables one to be reassured. For those
who claim to be of Abraham, the world is good, and even “very good,” be-
cause it is the work of a good God; a knowledge of it is also useful, since it
leads to a knowledge of the Creator. For Gnostics the world, the work of
a clumsy or perverted demiurge, is bad.
The value of the world in Platonism, at least in that of the Timaeus, is
greater than that found in “Abraham.” For Plato that which transcends the
world remains vague; for Abraham the Creator is “the only (truly) good.”
Conversely, the Epicurean world is better than that which Gnosticism imag-
ines; it is in fact not truly bad, but morally indifferent. The world according
to the Gnostics is on the contrary the epitome of evil, a trap and a prison.
The interest of the world, in Platonism, again looking only at the Timaeus,
is considerable, since knowledge of it constitutes the only path to excel-
lence in human conduct. It exists for those who follow Abraham: the
world is a completely legitimate and practical path to God; it is therefore
not without interest, but a detour through it is not indispensable, as reve-
lation can more immediately provide the believer with a more precise
knowledge and clearer prescriptions for action. Epicureanism considers
“physiology” as having only a negative, indirect value; it is nevertheless in-
dispensable, for without it wisdom would remain beyond our reach. For
Gnostics a knowledge of the world is useless, as the only liberating knowl-
edge is indeed rather that which enables one to escape it.
 Four Models
Chapter 
Marginal Models
As we have just seen, Antiquity produced four models that dealt with the
issue of the link between cosmology and anthropology. But among the
schools of thought whose responses we have briefly looked at, not all
were able to survive intact. Some disappeared, or were buried below the sur-
face. Others made compromises with models that were able to emerge tri-
umphant. I will now examine a succession of different cases. But it must
first be noted that the fundamental theory underlying the triumphant
model was not unanimously accepted.
I M P ERT I N EN C E
A. Negation of the very notion of Kosmos
There are a few examples of complete rejection of the major premise of the
dominant model, that is, the idea of the ordered nature of the world as kos-
mos. This rejection was sometimes expressed through parody, a genre that
refused to take the model of the world seriously, and that, moreover, ex-
pressed the same attitude toward anything that claimed to be serious. This
is the case of the master of that style, Lucian (– ..?). Inspired per-
haps by a text by the real Menippus, Lucian parodies the literary theme
that had become classic of the ascension and the voyage into the celestial
regions, a theme illustrated by Cicero, Lucan, and others.1 He begins with
a phrase that parodies the philosophical tales of conversion, the tone of
which is found as late as Spinoza, in the famous beginning of the Tracta-
tus de Intellectus Emendatione: “As for me, as soon as I had examined things
in life and had found all human things ridiculous, base and inconstant, I
mean fortunes, dominations, reigns, since I scorned them and considered
that to be concerned with them (spoudē) was to neglect truly serious things
(spoudaia), I forced myself to raise my head and to look at the Whole.”
The inflated tone of the moralist might make such a declaration appear
serious, if it were not followedby a development that aims to show that the
disorder of the sky is equal to that of the earth: “But then, what plunged
me into great confusion, was first the very thing that wise people (sophis-
tai) call the “world” (kosmos).” Lucian examines the structure of the phys-
ical universe beginning with the last sphere and descending to the earth,
the opposite of the movement of ascension that had carried his hero off to
the sky. He mentions one after the other the stars (no doubt the sphere of
the fixed stars), the Sun, the Moon, then atmospheric phenomena. This is
all summed up by an expression which, curiously, Helm leaves without
commentary and by which Menippus indirectly designates the physical
universe: “what the wise men call kosmos.”
This seems very clearly to allude to the passage by Xenophon that has
already been cited in which the word kosmos in the sense of “universe” ap-
pears for the first time, at least in the Greek literature that has survived.2
In Lucian’s time, or even earlier, if we acknowledge that the text for the
most part goes back to the time of Menippus, the word had long been un-
derstood to mean “universe.” Lucian, by emphasizing the word’s forgotten
etymology, invites us to question the legitimacy of the decision that is im-
plicitly made about the nature of the universe: that the decoration must
also represent an order. And if it is already troubling that questions about
the universe such as “how it was born, or who the artisan of it was, or the
principle of it, or what is its goal” could not be answered, the problem be-
comes critical with regard to the celestial bodies, that part of the world
that is more than just a part of it, since not only do they enclose the whole,
but they guarantee its coherence and legitimize the name of “order” that is
given to it: “When I then examined the world in detail, I was forced to ex-
perience a much greater confusion, for I found the stars thrown around
everywhere in the sky (hōs etukhe tou ouranou dierrimenous).” The stars are
not carefully positioned on the celestial vault; far from forming an intelli-
gible design or even a simply regular one, they are “thrown around” hap-
hazardly. This notion continued to torment thinkers up to the modern era,
to the extent that Descartes dreamed of finding the law hidden behind the
phenomenon.3 The metaphor of “propulsion,” or of “being thrown into,”
as we have seen, is often used to describe the way in which man appears as
an intruder and, at worst, as trouble-maker, in a splendidly ordered world.
Here it is turned around and applied to the world itself. Its nature as kos-
 The Medieval Model
mos is placed in doubt. It is possible that the world, to repeat the common
interpretation of a fragment of Heraclitus, is made only “of things poured
out haphazardly.”4
B. A Cosmology without Anthropological Relevance
One might also, without formally refusing to see the world as a kosmos,
reject the notion of an anthropological orientation of cosmology, such as
is developed in the Timaeus. This was the case, again in Lucian’s time, of
Galen (–).5 Plato, as we shall see, explained man’s unique upright
posture as orienting him toward contemplation of the sky.6 But Galen was
content with a purely immanentist explanation of man’s posture and ar-
gued against those who associated anatomical facts with a final causality.
He places standing erect or sitting, another position unique to man, within
the overall context of a physical anthropology in which the characteristics
unique to man form a system. These two positions are necessary since they
are the most convenient for an animal with hands: “All the actions which
the hands perform in the exercise of the arts require these two positions;
for some we perform standing and some sitting, but nobody does anything
lying supine or prone. It was right for Nature not to give any other animal
a structure enabling it to stand erect or to sit, since the other animals were
not meant to make use of hands.” Galen then ridicules those who see the
erect posture as an orientation toward the sublime dimension of height.
Man, in this regard, is rather less well suited than certain flat fishes whose
two eyes are on the same side of its head, or even the donkey, an animal that
hardly symbolizes intelligence: “To think that man has an erect posture for
the sake of looking readily up to heaven and being able to say, ‘I reflect
Olympian light from my undaunted countenance,’ is to be expected of
men who have never seen the fish called uranoscopus (heaven-gazer), which
looks perpetually up to heaven whether it wants to or not, whereas man
would never see the heavens if he did not bend his neck back. Moreover,
this ability to bend the neck is not, of course, characteristic of the human
animal alone, but is found to an equal degree in the ass as well, not to men-
tion long-necked birds that can look up easily when they wish and can also
readily turn their eyes in every direction.” In conclusion, Galen even in-
dulges in playing Plato against himself, the Republic against the Timaeus—
a dialogue which, according to him, as we shall see, does not express Plato’s
most authentic thinking. Socrates ridiculed a too-literal interpretation of
the way in which knowledge is supposed to turn the soul’s gaze on high.
What is seen above is not material, as if all it took to be a philosopher were
Marginal Models 
to float on one’s back: “It is a mark of gross carelessness if a person fails to
listen to Plato when he says, ‘Looking up does not mean lying on one’s
back and yawning, but . . . means using one’s reason to meditate on the na-
ture of things.’”
Moreover, still looking at the Middle Ages, the notion that man is the
goal of creation was demolished by the strict followers of Aristotelian phi-
losophy. Avicenna is perhaps the first medieval author to rise up explicitly
against the idea that the movements of the stars would have as their ulti-
mate purpose the well-being of the sublunar region and its inhabitants.
Yet he doesn’t indicate who had argued in favor of the theory he is attack-
ing. He speaks of “certain people” who had taken literally a phrase of Alex-
ander of Aphrodisias that might have been interpreted in that way.7 The
formula is found in the commentator’s writings—if indeed the treatise
in which it is found is in fact his.8 But Avicenna does not name those
whom he reproaches for that mistaken interpretation.
Elsewhere he does name, in a similar context, Abū ’l-H� asan al-‘Āmirı̄.9
We find the same attitude in the scholarly itinerant Bible commentator
Abraham Ibn Ezra (d. ), a rationalist thinker who was, moreover, un-
der Avicenna’s influence. In a long digression in the second version of his
commentary on the first verse of Genesis, he launches into a stock attack
on any sort of anthropomorphism, more specifically against the idea of
man’s superiority over the angels, a recurring criticism in his writings.10
C. A Cosmology without Moral Relevance
The model could be protested less for its premises than for its conse-
quences, to wit, for its ethical relevance. Lucian is commonly contrasted
with the emperor Marcus Aurelius, his exact contemporary (–): for
Lucian, nature does not lead to anything, a description of it is meaning-
less; for Marcus Aurelius, it does have a meaning.11 It is all the more re-
markable that they are in agreement on at least one point: that which
Lucian proclaims to be irrelevant in the comic register, Marcus Aurelius
declares to be indifferent using a tragic tone—as if to illustrate Marx’s fa-
mous quip. The philosopher emperor asserts that, even if one assumes the
world is in disorder, that would not be a reason to imitate it. He then pro-
vides an alternative, but only to reject it: “[it is] either an ordered universe
(kosmos) or a medley heaped together (kukeōn), but still an order; or can or-
der subsist in you and disorder (akosmia) in the Whole (to pan)! And that,
too, when all things are so distinguished andyet intermingled and sympa-
thetic (sumpathōn). . . . And whether the Whole (to holon) be God, all is
 The Medieval Model
well—or whether it be Chance (to eikēi), somehow molecules or atoms, be
not yourself there ruled by Chance.”12 Are we in the presence here of a
seriously imagined alternative, or simply of an extreme case, an a fortiori
reasoning (“even if, considering the impossible, the world were in disor-
der, that would not be a reason to let oneself go”), or even a “nightmare,”
similar to what has been called “Plato’s nightmare?”13 As for the two terms
that Marcus Aurelius contrasts, they form the fundamental alternative of
ancient cosmology,14 and their formulation does not in itself present any
specific interest. However, their relativization as regards the ethical do-
main is interesting, in that it presents the program of a de-solidifying in
relation to the world, a program destined to be adopted later in a com-
pletely different atmosphere.
The passage by Galen that we looked at above is only a detailed illus-
tration of the thinker’s general attitude, and it is found notably in a pas-
sage from the voluminous work in which he compares Hippocrates and
Plato.15 In that passage he declares that physical facts in general are irrel-
evant to how one conducts one’s life: “To inquire also into matters that are
not useful for ethics and political action is appropriate (akolouthon) only
for those philosophers who have chosen speculative philosophy.” Galen
draws up a very classic list of questions in advanced physics (indeed,
“meta-physics”) asking “whether there is anything after this universe (kos-
mos), and if there is, what its character is, and whether this universe is self-
contained, whether there is more than one universe, whether the number
of universes is very large, and similarly whether this universe is generated
or ungenerated, and if it had a beginning, whether some god was the arti-
san of it, or whether it was no god but some irrational and artless cause that
by chance made it as beautiful as if a god supreme in wisdom (sophōtatos)
and power had supervised its construction.” Such questioning is useless
for the domestic economy, politics, or justice in general: they “contribute
nothing to managing one’s own household well or caring properly for the
public interest or acting with justice and friendliness toward kinsmen, cit-
izens, and foreigners.” However, Galen has just introduced an essential
theme here: the beauty of the world might just as easily be the result either
of what a god effectively achieved, or of factors devoid of reason, art, or
necessity, but which rendered it the same as what a god might have
achieved. In any case, everything occurs as if the world were the work of a
wise demiurge; the question of knowing whether that is in fact the case
therefore loses its urgency.
The same approach is applied to the idea of providence: “While it is
useless to ask whether the universe had a beginning or not, this is not the
Marginal Models 
case with an inquiry about divine providence. It is better for all of us to ex-
amine the statement that there is something in the universe superior to
men in power and wisdom; but it is not necessary to consider the question
what sort of substance the gods have, whether they are entirely bodiless or
whether they too have bodies, as we do. These matters and many others
are completely useless for those virtues and actions that we call ethical and
political, and no less for the cure of the soul’s ills.” Whereas one can dis-
miss research into advanced physics without further ado, one can be con-
tent here with “acting as if,” with a philosophy of the als ob . . . It is mean-
ingless to practical life whether the world was made by a god or by a blind
cause, as long as that cause acted as if it had followed a plan.
Galen expressly asserts the Socratic genealogy of his attitude with an
implicit citation from the passage of the Memorabilia that we looked at
above: “Xenophon’s statement about them is best; not only did he con-
demn them as useless himself, but he said that Socrates also held this view.
The other companions of Socrates agree, among them Plato himself; for
when he adds to his philosophy a theory of nature he gives the exposition
of it to Timaeus, not to Socrates.” Plato is thus put back into the lineage
of Socrates, and the considerations of physics in the Timaeus are attributed
only to the eponymous character, an attitude found not only in Galen,
but also, two centuries later, in the writings of the emperor Julian.16 Galen
places physics and logic alongside each other in order to reject what is ex-
cessively technical about those two disciplines: “just as he gives the more
extended dialectic to Parmenides and his pupil Zeno.” However, with a
view to healthy politics, Galen maintains the necessity of carrying out some
studies in physics and logic: “For in a theoretical study of ethics and poli-
tics it is impossible not to touch at all on the theory of nature and of rea-
soning,” even if, when they are considered by themselves, “you will find that
these [theoretical inquiries] too are among the useless things.” It is a pity
that Galen does not say precisely which physical and logical knowledge
has a moral and/or political usefulness. In any case, physics thus appears
as a simple appendage to philosophy in the strict sense. It has nothing to
teach us in the realm of behavior. There is nothing surprising, therefore,
in the fact that in his summary of the Timaeus, a summary we have only in
Arabic, Galen omits passages that concern the imitation of the stars.17
A N “A B RA H A M I C ” S O C RAT I S M
All these thinkers follow the Socratic tradition, sometimes by very explic-
itly invoking Socrates’ name. In the medieval choir that voice is not truly
 The Medieval Model
discordant but sings a counterpoint. It abstains from any judgment on the
world itself, even less any depreciative judgment. It sees the world in the
same way the Platonic model does, but, simply put, it does not consider
the world relevant in the final analysis. In fact it proposes a different an-
thropological model. It asserts a certain primacy of a knowledge of self
over that of the world, thereby radicalizing the “Socratic revolution” or
undermining the restoration carried out by Plato in the Timaeus. It is bet-
ter that man examine himself rather than study the physical world. Sev-
eral themes are intertwined here: the vanity of knowing nature, for those
who do not know themselves; the impossibility that knowing nature might
provide us with peace of mind.
The earliest author in whom this tendency clearly appears is no doubt
Philo of Alexandria (ca.  ...?).18 He represents a synthesis (whose el-
ements are difficult to isolate) of Platonism (rather, of Socratism) and bib-
lical thought. He presents his concept of a knowledge of nature within
the general framework of his work, the exegesis of the book of Genesis.
More specifically, he reflects on the allegorical meaning of the migration
of Abraham. Abraham, born in Ur, first settled in Harran before going on
to Palestine. Each of these towns corresponds to a fundamental dimension
of human activity. Abraham begins first with an involvement in astron-
omy.19 He is thus associated with one particular type of man. Philo distin-
guishes three types: by nature, some belong to the earth, others to the sky;
still others belong to God.20 Those who pursue the pleasures of the body
are of the earth; artists, scholars, and lovers of knowledge (philomathēs) are
of the sky. Indeed, among our faculties the celestial faculty is the intellect.
This association of the intellect with the sky has a cosmological founda-
tion, since each of the celestial bodies is itself an intellect. The men of God
are the priests and the prophets. Such men refuse to mix with the repub-
lic of the universe or to become citizens of the world. They thus transcend
everything relating to the senses to attain the intelligibleworld, where
they relocate after becoming naturalized citizens of the republic of Ideas.
Before becoming a man of God, while he still lived among the Chaldeans,
Abraham was thus a man of the sky. He sought to know the higher real-
ity, which is the ether, and philosophized on events and their causes.
Philo also uses the traditional tripartite division of types of life into a
life of pleasure, an active life in search of honor (politics), and a contem-
plative life. But he combines the two upper levels differently: the contem-
plative life is divided in two, depending on whether it bears on the world
or on God. The first kind is thus related to political life, through the in-
termediary of the Stoic idea that man is a citizen of the world. One can
Marginal Models 
thus radically transcend the realm of the political only by also leaving the
walls of the cosmic City.
This is exactly what Abraham did. God allowed him to go beyond
astronomical knowledge.21 That knowledge was essentially idolatrous: it
“taught the creed that the world was not God’s work, but itself God.” It
led to fatalism, “that the vicissitudes of better and worse are reckoned by
the courses and ordered revolutions of the stars, and that on these depends
the birth of good and ill.” God gives Abraham a new advantage. He makes
him the heir to a “wisdom which cannot be received by sense, but is ap-
prehended by a wholly pure and clear mind.” Philo reiterates the Platonic
theme of knowledge capable of disregarding the multi-colored spectacle
of worldly phenomena and of raising oneself to an understanding that
is possible only for the intellect. “Through this wisdom the best of all
migrations becomes an established fact, the migration of the soul which
passes from astrology to real nature,” not, of course, toward the physics of
the sublunary, but toward the knowledge of the primary principles of na-
ture. Philo, going beyond Plato, thus connects to the Bible: this migration
leads “from the created to the uncreated, from the world to the Maker and
Father of the world,” toward Him whom the Timaeus declared to be essen-
tially unknowable. He is accessible through faith: “Those whose views are
of the Chaldean type have put their trust in heaven, while he who has mi-
grated from this home has given his trust to . . . God.”
This migration, however, is not, as we might expect, centrifugal. Quite
to the contrary, it leads us toward the center, toward the subject of knowl-
edge, a subject that is constantly tempted to forget itself, favoring the ob-
ject of its desired knowledge.22 Philo heaps sarcasm on the so-called sages
who speak of every thing and claim to grasp the essence of it, as if they had
been present at the creation of the world, as if they had been the advisors
of the Creator when he created all things. He invites them to set aside pry-
ing questions and choose a much closer object: themselves. Once a knowl-
edge of oneself has been acquired, every other knowledge becomes credi-
ble: “Do not . . . spin your airy fables about moon or sun or the other objects
in the sky and the universe so far removed from us and so varied in their
natures, until you have scrutinized and come to know yourselves. After
that, we may perhaps believe you when you hold forth on other subjects.”
Our inability to place ourselves before the creation of the world and
thus, all the more so, before our own creation, is found in the Bible. There
we already see the ironic questions that Philo asks of the self-important
physicists.23 But he effects an interesting connection, which justifies the
expression “Abrahamic Socratism” that I have hazarded. Indeed he places
 The Medieval Model
biblical facts alongside Socrates’ experience, which is explicitly invoked.24
The Holy Scriptures reproach those who scrutinize the physical universe
with being indiscreetly involved in what does not concern them, things on
high. They are invited to be concerned with that which is close to them,
with that which cannot be closer: themselves. The tendency toward a
knowledge of external things should be directed rather toward knowing
the instruments of knowledge themselves, the organs of the senses. In fact,
the name of the town where Abraham resided for a time—Harran-the-
Hollow (this epithet is Philo’s pseudo-etymological elucidation)—allegor-
ically alludes to those windows of the body. This critical examination of
knowledge is “the most necessary and most appropriate philosophy for
man.” In this way, the Bible not only voices the exhortation to know things
that are close, as formulated in Pindar and illustrated by the famous story
of Thales who fell in a well;25 it also carries out the order that Socrates had
borrowed from the Delphic Apollo: “Bring the explorer down from heaven
and away from these researches draw the ‘Know thyself.’ . . . This charac-
ter Hebrews call ‘Terah,’ Greeks ‘Socrates.’ For they say that ‘Know thy-
self ’ was likewise the theme of life-long pondering to Socrates, and that
his philosophy was concerned exclusively with his own self.”
The fulfillment of this sort of Socratic revolution does not only end up
in an ethics or politics; it opens up onto a gnoseology. The subject toward
which it invites one to descend is also the perceiving subject who should
examine himself and measure his power for knowledge. The “Know your-
self ” is vaguely founded on biblical passages that recommend to “take heed
(to yourself ),” in which this imperative is a translation of hiššāmer (lekha).26
This is not the final stage. The goal is and remains knowledge of God. But
going through what is represented by the town of Harran enables a short-
cut to knowledge of God, which no longer need be obtained via a detour
through physics.27 To descend from the sky is nothing, if one only applies
the same research methods to the earth. The danger is not in one object of
study or another, the sky, for example, but in the curiosity with which one
studies it. Philo can therefore exhort us to change our land, to “quit, then,
your meddling with heavenly concerns, and take up your abode . . . in
yourselves.” The field of inquiry we require is ourselves. It is from that
point that one can know God: “For by observing the conditions prevailing
in your own individual household, the element that is master in it, and that
which is in subjection, the living and the lifeless element, the rational and
the irrational, the immortal and the mortal, the better and the worse, you
will gain forthwith (euthus) a sure knowledge of God and of his works.”
The method for doing this corresponds to a widespread idea in Antiquity:
Marginal Models 
one can conclude from the presence of a spirit in oneself to the presence
of that same spirit in the universe.28 Just as our spirit directs what is in us,
so it conducts the universe. I want to stress the revolution in the method
carried out by Philo: there is no longer any need, for those who can exam-
ine themselves, for a detour through a consideration of nature; the spirit
passes in a straight line from the self to God.
T H E T WO D EF E AT ED M O D EL S A N D T H EI R RE T U R N
The two rejected models reacted in many ways. In certain contexts their
rejection itself conferred a greater impact upon them. In others, their pres-
ence only imbued the model that remained dominant with a specific tone.
A. Revolts and Repressions
The Epicurean model is among those that became virtually invisible. It
was not alone: Seneca pointed out that there was no longer anyone who
defended the ideas of Pyrrho.29 But later, the emperor Julian, among the
authors whose books have been lost, adds the writings of Epicurus to
those of Pyrrho.30 In the Middle Ages Alain de Lille was able to write that
he was living in an age when Epicurus and Manichaeism had disappeared.31
Epicureanism was in fact no longer anything but a subterranean trickle,
and the image of Epicurus was reduced to that of a pleasure-seeker.32 For
Talmudic Judaism, his name even became a propername (apiqoros) to des-
ignate the unbeliever, specifically the negator of providence.33 Those who
proposed an atomistic physics, such as William of Conches, were eager to
keep their distance from Epicurus.34
The same is true of Gnosticism. Christianity was the most radical in
rejecting it. Christianity was in fact founded on the affirmation not only of
the goodness of the Creator (which it shares with Judaism and Islam), but
also, and perhaps above all, of the Incarnation, which is prolonged in the
sacramental economy of the Church. The Christian God is so to speak in-
volved in the world. An attack against the world must therefore be a full-
strength attack against God as well, and a more direct one, in any case,
than it would be in Judaism and Islam, where the connection between God
and the world is only one of creation.
Thus on Christian land Gnosticism underwent several revivals, cata-
logued by the doxographers of the official Church under the heading of
“heresies.” This was the case in the Byzantine Balkans, among the Bogomils.
It was again the case, later, and perhaps in the wake of the former, among
 The Medieval Model
the Cathars of Languedoc. According to the Bogomils, darkness, matter,
and the visible world are the work of the demon. The Cathars have similar
doctrines.35 The question of the soul’s entering into the world, or of the ori-
gin of the union of the soul and the body, did not receive a clear response
from them. That union nevertheless remained abnormal. We are not part
of the world. According to a Cathar prayer: “We are not of the world and
the world is not of us (Car nos no em del mon nil mon no es de nos).”36
In Islamic lands we find Gnostic elements among certain unorthodox
thinkers. Thus the exaggerated Platonism of the doctor and free-thinker
Abu Zakariyya ar-Râzî expresses a similar idea: “As long as the soul exists
in this material world, it will not escape from its evils”; the commentary by
Kazwanî in this regard adds that the soul then knows that it is “a stranger
(jarı̄ba) in this world.”37 The myth is presented in more detail elsewhere, in
Nasir-i Khusraw, with the image of sleep and awakening, of a return to a su-
perior world, etc., and in the discussion between the two Razis, our own and
the Isma’ili propagandist Abû Hatim.38 It is true that Razi seems to have
derived a more positive opinion of the world, akin to Manicheism, since,
according to his central myth, the creation of the world is the work of God
helping the soul. Certain extremist Shi’ites go so far as to distinguish Allah
from the Intellect, the first thing created, with the typically Gnostic role
of the demiurge who, forgetting his origins, believes he is alone.39
B. Domestication: Abrahamic Gnosticism
A reserved sensibility in relation to the world, even a sensation of foreign-
ness with regard to it, are frequent occurrences in more orthodox religious
expressions. But they are held at bay by the fundamental assertion of the
basic goodness of creation. Thus one very frequently finds assertions that
the world is nothing but a dream. The theme is already old; in Gnosticism
it takes on a sinister form: the dream turns into a nightmare.40 The simple,
neutralized, image of a dream in the three religions remained active in the
Middle Ages and ended up in the assertion that gives its name to the most
famous play by Calderón.41
This is the case in Christianity and in its founding documents, which
contain, as we have seen, a certain number of negative formulas concern-
ing the kosmos, understood in the sense of everything that turns away from
God.42 Later tradition sometimes voiced a “scorn for the world (contemp-
tus mundi)” or “for the century (saeculi),” to the point of conceiving man as
an a-cosmic being. It sometimes went so far as to preach escape from the
world.43 Monasticism even knew exercises intended to develop a feeling of
Marginal Models 
foreignness, such as that aimed at a desired alienation (xeniteia), which
habituated one to not feeling at home anywhere, except beyond the world.
In Syrian monasticism, inner alienation led to a true life of wandering; in
Egypt, one could practice alienation in one place, as what was essential was
to make oneself foreign to the world itself, not to a specific place.44 Even
contemporary Christianity experiences a sensibility of this kind, as is some-
times seen in Chesterton—especially before his conversion to Catholicism,
to be sure—or in the Catholic novelist from the Southern United States,
Walker Percy.45 But in all cases the world from which one must escape is
not physical nature, which is the work of a good God.46 The “world” or the
“century” is a particular attitude toward God, indeed it simply designates,
in monastic literature, all other conditions of life. Evil comes only from an
unruled attachment to the goods of this world—which still remain only
goods. We can see what separates the most ascetic monk from Gnosti-
cism: the Gnostic is essentially foreign to the world and becomes so radi-
cally once he has become aware of it; the monk is part of the world and
must separate himself from it at the price of an effort at asceticism.47
The case of Islam is a bit different. A positive concept of “Gnosticism”
(‘irfān) endured there more durably than on Christian land. One can find
a gnosticizing sensibility in several locations. Thus, for example, among
the “Brethren of Purity,” but also in the Sufism of ’At�t� ār.48 This sensibil-
ity seeks legitimacy by leaning, of course, on words attributed to Muham-
mad. It is therefore said that “this world below (dunyā) is a prison for be-
lievers and a paradise for the impious,” as well as the recommendation: “Be
in this world below as if you were a foreigner (ġarı̄b).”49 The image of the
world as a bridge that must be crossed over, but on which one must not
settle, is found almost everywhere, as a logion attributed to Jesus.50 It is a
question, however, of “the here below,” of the inferior world, and certainly
not of all creation.
Finally, in Judaism we find traces of the same sensibility: here, too,
man, or the intellect that makes him human, is a foreigner.51 Judaism also
has the formula of the uninhabitable bridge.52 And one could spot Gnos-
tic elements in the Kabbala and perhaps even points of contact with Ca-
tharism on the issue of evil.53
 The Medieval Model
Chapter 
The Standard Vision of the World
The models we have just looked at remained marginal, and for the most
part only the first and the third—the Timaean and Abrahamic models—
remained in the forefront as rivals. The Timaean model had in its favor the
philosophical syncretism that dominated late Antiquity: a Neo(?)platon-
ism that had received an Aristotelian foundation in logic, physics, and
ethics, which also readily borrowed ethics from Stoicism. The Abrahamic
model came to the forefront when the revealed religions triumphed to-
gether on the social and spiritual levels. All the same, at the moment we
cannot claim that the two models were foreign to each other. The domi-
nant philosophy and religion did in fact exchange many elements. The
medieval model for the most part was the fruit of a compromise between
“Timaeus” and “Abraham.” In the medieval worlds of “Abrahamic” reli-
gion, Plato’s dialogue was accepted both directly and indirectly almost
without interruption. Plato was “the greatest among those who have phi-
losophized on the world.”1 The guiding question regarding the relationship
between cosmology and ethics thus received a specific model of response.
This model dominated the period extending from classical Greek philos-
ophy to the end of the Middle Ages. It is that model we will now examine.
CO M M O N G RO U N D
The four models were able to confront each other, and two come out win-
ners, because they did so on one and the same terrain. Indeed, during a
long period in the history of thought—a period that corresponds to what
we call Classical Antiquity and the Middle Ages—the way the world wasrepresented remained roughly the same. This representation was, in short,
the spheres imagined by Eudoxus, then adopted by Aristotle and Ptolemy.
These thinkers conferred an authority upon them that for a long time re-
mained uncontested.
As for those who pondered this cosmographic science, I am including
here only educated people, those who had access to written culture and
who therefore left traces—they were in a very small minority. The com-
mon man might have imagined the world as fantastically as he wanted, but
his way of viewing things would have been written down only in the most
unusual of circumstances—and with the help of others. This was the case
of the people of Montaillou, who were visited by an Inquisitor in the
twelfth century. Or of the miller in sixteenth-century Italy whose opinions
were also preserved by the Inquisitors there, and for whom the world was
a huge cheese.2 Such ways of seeing belong to a succession of immemorial
representations. Sometimes educated people also defended deviant cos-
mographies, such as the egg-shaped world of Hildegarde von Bingen, or
Robert Grosseteste’s cosmogony founded on light, not to mention the ar-
chaising image, supposedly faithful to the Bible, provided by the merchant
who became a monk, Cosmas Indicopleustes, who in late sixth-century By-
zantium argued against the roundness of the earth.3
I will recall here that such knowledge prevailed for a period that had a
definite beginning and end. Before that period there was not one cosmog-
raphy on which everyone could agree. Each thinker could present his or
her personal vision of the universe, a vision that also inevitably included a
cosmogony, and could defend its plausibility as best he could. In ancient
Greece we do not find a unified vision of the physical universe farther back
than the fourth century ...4 The subsequent triumph of a single cos-
mography eliminated or stripped of relevance any previous attempt at a
cosmogony, for example, by relegating it to the realm of myth (as in Plato’s
Timaeus).
It was thus within the same framework that what I am calling “cos-
mologies” were able to confront each other or, rather, that the cosmologi-
cal issue was henceforth able to be addressed. One knew against what, or
in what, one had to place oneself in order to resolve the problem of man’s
place in the world. Based on an interpretation of the facts, one could go
from a positive to a negative view, or vice versa: some Gnostics saw the
world as a prison, whereas the dominant tendency (Plato, Aristotle, the
Stoics, the Neoplatonists) saw themselves as living in a splendid palace.
The world’s affective value could consequently change its sign, from pos-
itive to negative: the artistic arrangement of the spheres inspired joy in
 The Medieval Model
some when they were faced with the harmony, and despair in others about
ever escaping from it. But everyone had the same description of the world.5
We can fathom the breakthrough represented by Classical Greece: before
then the “wisdom of the world,” wherever it existed, conceived the world,
in relation to which it was a matter of man’s situating himself, in a myth-
ical fashion; after ancient Greece, man’s insertion into the cosmic order
was based on a known world—no longer one experienced in myth—on
a vision of the world that was of course rudimentary, but nevertheless es-
tablished through means that were derived from scientific knowledge. A
single unified cosmography, broadly sketched, provided a basis for all cos-
mologies. It even favored those with which it had more affinity. The sci-
entific representation of the world was prolonged therefore without inter-
ruption into a response to the existential question of being-in-the-world.
“Knowledge” and “sensibility” were in phase.
From this point of view it is interesting to note that the period I am en-
visioning here produced, alongside highly technical treatises, such as those
of Ptolemy, several cosmological summaries for the general public. Many
examples of such writings may be cited. In the ancient, “pagan,” world,
Ocellus Lucanus (second century ...) comes to mind.6 In Islam, a pop-
ular encyclopedia such as that of the Brethren of Purity in several places,
not to say ad nauseam, presents the overall schema of the universe in
onion-like layers. A work such as the “Secret of Creation” (Sirr al-Xalı̄qa)
is completely devoted to presenting accepted cosmology.7 In the Christian
world, we possess accounts in Latin, such as the Hortus Deliciarum by Her-
rad of Landsberg. But it is remarkable that texts are also found in the ver-
nacular, in French or Middle High German, such as the Lucidarius.8 Fi-
nally, so that the illiterate might also know how the world was made, there
were abundant graphic representations, both pictorial and sculptural.9
As for the philosophers, they presented sketches of the structure of the
physical universe in various contexts that provided a sort of lowest com-
mon denominator of the ancient and medieval vision of the world in non-
technical terms. Averroes is one such example.10 Maimonides undertook
this exercise twice, once in a work addressed to an elite, the Guide of the
Perplexed, but also, more surprisingly, at the beginning of a juridical work
in which he presents a picture of the whole of the created universe as an
integral part of knowledge that nevertheless has God as its object.11
This cosmography was not simply the object of speculation. In prin-
ciple it could be experienced. Such experience is illustrated poetically in
the tales of the ascent of the soul into the upper spheres, which we find
among various Latin authors and their medieval imitators.12 These tales
The Standard Vision of the World 
could be pure literary fictions. But they might also describe an experience
that a magical ritual was supposed to cause to occur.13 Tales of the soul’s
ascent into the upper world are quite ancient, since they go back to Sumer:
Etana, on the wings of an eagle, sees the world below become smaller and
smaller.14 But it was only later that they were associated with a description
of the world like that provided by science. One of these tales even has the
prophet of Islam as its hero, which conferred an uncommon authority
upon it. This is the famous hadith of the “nocturnal voyage” of Muham-
mad. It fed the Muslim imagination, but it also passed into the Latin West
in the form of Mohammed’s Ladder, whose influence extended as late as
Dante.15 The same cosmology could be presented in the form of a dream,
as in that described by Savonarola in , in his sermon on the Annunci-
ation.16 It could also serve as farce, as in Cervantes’ Don Quixote, specifi-
cally in the second part of that work (). The hero, blindfolded, mounted
on a wooden horse, is supposed to have traveled quick as lightning over a
fabulous distance, at the cost of a detour through the celestial regions. And
he recognizes perfectly the places where he is led to believe he has traveled:
the three regions of the air (the second is the province of hail and snow,
the third that of thunder and lightning), and the place of fire, located be-
tween the sky of the moon and the last region of the air.17
The success of this type of literature is not simply a fact to be noted. It
is evidence that the questions it dealt with appeared relevant to the edu-
cated man. Such a man owed it to himself to have an exact representation
of the world. For ancient and medieval man, the structure of the physical
universe was important, it was interesting. Neither of the two questions,
“who am I?” and “where am I?”—or, if we wish, “what is man?” and “what
is the world?”—could be answered without an answer to the other.18
A M U LT I - LEV EL WO R L D
I will now describe that structure. I will do so only in very broad outline,
relying on the work of historians.19 Further, I will not mention a great
many details that to me appear less relevant to the subject at hand.
According to the cosmography in question,celestial realities and things
of this world below are not on the same level. The sublunary is separated
from the supralunary. It is so, as the word suggests, by the barrier created
by the sphere of the Moon. In addition, the different levels in space are en-
dowed with different values, favor being given to the sky. The sky, explains
Plato in the Timaeus, was made directly by the Demiurge, whereas the cre-
 The Medieval Model
ation of the earth and its inhabitants was relegated to secondary divini-
ties.20 Consequently the respective works are unequally perfect.
In Aristotle, the two realms are formed of two different types of matter:
whereas the sublunary is formed of four elements, whose natural move-
ment is rectilinear, the supralunary is made of a fifth element (quinta es-
sentia) whose nature is to move around in a circle.21 The first Stoics knew
only a single matter and therefore refused the idea of a fifth substance.
Nevertheless fire admitted different degrees of purity. Their physics were
therefore different, before a certain syncretism came to erase the borders
with Middle Platonism and peripateticism.22 In any case, the practical re-
sult is the same: a cosmological scale is doubled by an axiological layering.
There is no medieval text to suggest that the sky must be made of ele-
ments completely identical to those found on earth. But the question of
knowing whether the difference is of degree or kind remained in dispute.23
Not all medievals admitted a celestial matter, and some preferred a vision
along Stoic lines, such as, among the Christians, Johannes Scotus Eriugena
or William of Conches.24 The same is true of certain Jewish authors.25
But those who believed so were in the majority. Among them one finds
Christians such as Bonaventure.26 The same belief is found among the
Jews, and above all when they were highly observant Aristotelians, such as
Ibn Ezra or the radical Averroist Isaac Albalag.27 Maimonides attributed
traditional authority to the doctrine by claiming to have discovered it in a
passage from the Pirqê d-Rabbi Eliezer.28 Those who had Neoplatonic ten-
dencies, such as Ibn Gabirol (Avicebron), for example, introduced some
modifications: the substance of the sky and of the sublunary elements is
the same as for quantity; but the substance of the sky does not have the
same qualities as the sublunary elements and is not subjected to generation
and corruption.29 Still, the doctrine of two matters is found among Pla-
tonist Kabbalists such as Bahya ben Asher or Nachmanides.30 Gersonides
conceived of a single substance, the differentiation of which produced
supra- and sublunary matter. It was not having recognized this primary
substance that led the Ancients to dualism.31
According to Averroes, it was necessary to distinguish two types of
matter and two types of presence of form in that matter. For supralunary
substances, the form does not subsist in the matter, and the matter is only
substrate, not potential matter; for sublunary substances, the form subsists
in the matter, which is potential. We will not dwell on this here. But it is
interesting to note Averroes’ emphasis that knowledge of that difference
is so important that a lack of such knowledge prevents the attainment of
The Standard Vision of the World 
human perfection.32 We can see that cosmography was of supreme inter-
est; to be concerned with it was certainly not idle curiosity.
Here below, one finds the theater of the generation and corruption of
things that emerge from the four elements and which return to them.
Above, the stars are eternal as individuals. Below, things cannot be re-
peated identically. Not being able to experience the infinite revolution of
the celestial bodies, at the very least earthly things imitate that revolution
through cyclical occurrences, such as those involving water, which evapo-
rates, then falls back down as rain; or the seasons that recur; or animal
species, among whom reproduction imitates eternity, although no one in-
dividual survives eternally; or the great land and water masses: they change
places following a very slow rhythm, as seen by the presence of fossil shells
in mountains, which were discovered in most distant Antiquity, and
which medieval observers continuously noted.33
The earth is only an imperceptible point, invisible to whoever observes
things as a whole.34 Whoever carries out this experiment practically by go-
ing up in the sky can see the earth only as an object of scorn, and laugh at
the smallness of reasons for men to go to war—so say the Pompey of Lu-
can, and Dante himself, or the Troilus of Chaucer.35 In addition, the earth
is formed of a vile, heavy, opaque matter. The authors who play with the
idea of a cosmogony see earth as the concretization of the debris from
higher spheres, and sometimes use powerful images to describe it, such as
a sewer.36 This did not, however, prevent a more positive vision of the
earth, where it is represented as the dwelling place of man, from his point
of view, and on his scale. Need we recall that ancient and medieval poets
were as aware as was the sapeur Camember that “the spa-ring [is] a period
of ru-newal”? It is more useful, however, to note that certain thinkers, go-
ing from feeling to reflection, remarked that a study of the earth is not only
more useful and appropriate to us than a study of the heavens, but such a
study gives us an affinity with the sky. The period that concerns us is there-
fore marked by an oscillation between “faithfulness to the earth” and “for-
getting the earth,” favoring either the stars, or the ultimate destiny of man,
which is celestial.37
M A N
The question “What is man?” which Kant elevated to the rank of the cen-
tral question of all thought,38 was not often raised in Antiquity and dur-
ing the Middle Ages. And when the question was explicitly formulated,39
it rarely received an answer. It was only in very unusual circumstances that
 The Medieval Model
man’s humanity appeared as an issue, as in Augustine’s factus eram ipse mihi
magna quaestio, or in the famous formula of Abū H� ayyān al-Tawh� ı̄d ı̄
(d. ): “Man has become an issue for man (inna al-insāna qad aškala
‘alayhi ’l-insān).”40 Man, in the period that concerns us here, was charac-
terized in a whole series of ways that would be too tedious to list and
which, in any case, have already been the object of scholarly monographs.
Thus, for example, man is a double, amphibious animal.41 He is the limit
or the horizon between the material and the spiritual.42 Or yet, he is a re-
sourceless animal, neglected by his wicked stepmother, Nature, etc.43
In the Middle Ages the question of who—man or the angels—was the
best of all creatures remained in dispute. And the responses usually given
to that question were not the same in different religious traditions. Among
Jewish thinkers, a majority decided in favor of the angels.44 In the Muslim
world the Koran clearly pronounces in favor of man.45 And in the Chris-
tian world one detects a discordant, although discrete, note. The accent is
placed in a more decisive way on man’s historicity, which is a consequence
of his carnal nature. Human love must reach its maturity in charity, which
implies time. The angel makes his decision outside time and remains eter-
nally what he has chosen once. Man can fall and be redeemed. From this
point of view man is worth more than the angels. The angels can learn
something from man, for what occurs in human history is inaccessible to
angelic spirits.46 This is one of the arguments that encouraged certain me-
dieval authors to speak of man’s relative superiority over the angels.47
Among man’s characteristics, I will look only at the traits that involve
his relationship to the physical universe. First, as for quantity, man is
something very small compared to the world. He is not what is greatest in
the world. He is in fact only an insignificant part of it.48 And as for qual-
ity, man is not the best of what the world contains,either. The “best” are
the celestial bodies, as Aristotle suggests rather clearly, an idea that would
later be adopted by an entire tradition.49 However, man is the best of the
sublunary beings, the most perfect animal. Psalm , which contains one of
the rare occurrences of the question “what is man?”—which here is an ex-
clamation more than an interrogation—very clearly sums up man’s inter-
mediary place in the universe: he is insignificant compared to the heavens;
in the immediate surroundings of the angels; and superior to the animals.
The position of “neighbor of what is above” for ancient and medieval
man was not necessarily occupied by a living being in the sense in which we
understand it—even if our experience with angels has become more diffi-
cult in modern times. It could involve physical bodies, celestial bodies,
which possess a life all their own, more intense than our own. An example
The Standard Vision of the World 
of this point of view can be found in Hierocles, a fifth-century Platonist:
“Nature . . . has attributed perpetual movement to the sky, and perma-
nence to the earth, so that each of them bears the trace of divine resem-
blance. It distributed to the celestial body the perimeter of the Whole, and
the center to that which surrounds the earth. . . . Things on high are dec-
orated with multicolored stars, and animals endowed with intellect; the
earth is decorated with plants and animals who use only sensations. Man
appears as the middle ground (mesotēs) of these beings, who are separated
by such a distance. He is amphibious, the last thing from on high, the first
of those below. This is why sometimes he is carried along with the im-
mortals, and, through his conversion to Intellect, receives his unique fate;
sometimes he is incorporated into mortal species and, by the fact that he
escapes divine laws, is deprived of the dignity (axia) appropriate to him.”50
Hierocles adopts the idea of man as an amphibious animal. He also adopts
another, equally widespread idea, that man’s place among all beings is not
assigned to him at the outset, but is the result of his freedom to assimilate
either into what exists above him, or into that which he ought to over-
come—a commonplace that, last but, as a matter of fact, perhaps least,
Pico della Mirandola voices in the exordium of a discourse that many
modern commentators believe to be original.51 However, what is interest-
ing for my purposes is how physical realities (stars/earth) are placed along-
side living things that are seen as various modes of life or forms of soul
(“angels”/plants and animals).
The ambitions of ancient and medieval man are therefore aimed at the
cosmos. They are inspired, and at the same time limited, by the place as-
signed to man in the hierarchy of completely physical realities that make
up the cosmos. Man’s craziest dream (literally speaking) is expressed in a
phrase by Maimonides, in which I detect an avowal. In a medical treatise
Maimonides devotes a chapter to mental health. There he explains that it
is useless to regret the past, that it is impossible to change it, “and there is
no difference between a man’s being grieved because of the loss of his
money or similar things and his being grieved because he is a man and not
an angel or a star (kawkab), or similar thinking about impossible things.”52
Maimonides also alludes to the legend of Nimrod and his metamorphosis
into a star. What is astonishing to Maimonides about it is that the trans-
formation is an ontological promotion, which shockingly seems to reward
a rebellion against God and injustice toward men.53 In the passage cited,
the choice of examples is revealing. Perhaps the childish dream of being
all-powerful can be expressed, for us, as well, through the fantasy of hav-
ing wings and being invisible. But the example is surprising: a modern
 The Medieval Model
writer would never dream of coveting the characteristics of a celestial
body. And it is just that dream that is found behind the representations of
astral immortality. Marsilio Ficino echoes this when he bases his invita-
tion to contemplate the sky on the kinship between man and the stars:
“Why do you watch so long, divine beings? Raise your eyes to the sky, cit-
izens of a celestial fatherland, residing on the earth! Yes, man is a terres-
trial star (terrena stella) surrounded by a cloud, and the star, for its part, is
a celestial man (celestis homo).”54
Thus to live on earth does not correspond to our most profound aspi-
ration. The final sphere would suit us much better. It is this yearning that is
expressed in a few verses which a biographer and doxographer attributes to
al-Farabi. They can be rendered as follows: “Brother, pierce the realm of
what is vain / and be in the realm of truths. Our abode is not one in which
we linger / and man’s being on earth is no marvel. What are we, if not lines
we enter / on a globe, an entering that awaits us. This one vies with this one
for / the smallest and most concise of words. What encompasses the heav-
ens is what we most deserve / now, how many are crowded together in the
center! (muh� ı̄t as-samāwāti awlā binā / fa-kam d� ā ’l-taz� āhum fı̄ ’l-markaz).”55
Ibn Bājja attributes a verse that is almost identical to the one we have just
cited to a poet by the name of Ibn al-Jallāb, who is perhaps the person of
the same name who is known as an astronomer:56 “That which surrounds
the skies is what we deserve. Why, then, do we linger in the center? (fa-
mad� ā al-xulūd ilā ’l-markaz).”57
P H Y S I CA L P REF I G U RAT I O N O F A N T H RO P O LO G Y
Furthermore, in this line of thought the presence of an anthropological di-
mension does not just arise from the fact that a certain image of man and
his behavior is proposed as a moral model by the structure of the physical
universe. It is also just as rooted in the belief that man’s condition is as if
prepared by the physical world, which thus calls man to a fuller realization,
through his will, of what his presence in the world already suggests to him.
A. Microcosm
On the one hand, man is himself conceived as a small world (microcosm),
as containing in himself, in miniature, all the components of the physical
universe. This idea has previously been studied at length.58 It is of timeless
antiquity and is found beyond the realm we are looking at here, for ex-
ample in India with the legend of Prajapati, or in ancient Iran.59 In Greece
The Standard Vision of the World 
it is at least as old as the pseudo-Hippocratic treatise of the Weeks: it finds
its most ancient and explicit formulation in Democritus.60 The theme re-
mains one of the most common, indeed, one of the most recurrent in me-
dieval thought. It is found in the three (or four) medieval monotheisms:
Latin and Greek Christianity, Judaism, and Islam. Its presence in Arabic
is ancient. In particular, the falāsifa were aware of it since al-Kindı̄. In
Islamic lands the Brethren of Purity made the image the title of two
of their epistles, only the second of which deals with the notion in a more
central way.61 The idea flourished in the twelfth century: among the Jews,
Joseph Ibn S� addı̄q (d. ), who was greatly inspired by the “Brethren,”
made it the title of a complete book, in which, moreover, the theme is not
dominant; among the Christians, Bernard of Tours (Bernardus Silvestris)
divided his De universitate mundi (ca. ) into a “Megacosmos” and a
“Microcosmos,” and Godfrey of Saint-Victor (d. ) wrote a Microcos-
mus. It was more or less popular depending on the philosophical schools.
Thus the Aristotelians had a tendency to see the image of microcosm only
as a metaphor.62
The idea was rendered in sculpted, imagined, or concretely drawn rep-
resentations, for example, in Hildegarde von Bingen, who described man
inscribed within a circle.63 Thus in miniatures in which a man is shown
nude, his arms extended to form a cross, inscribed in a square, his head sur-
rounded by a circle, or simply inscribedthe world as being
in a state of flux. With this additional dimension of time, to describe the
world and tell of its formation—the history and the geography of the uni-
Introduction 
verse, if you will—are no longer in contrast. In the past there was the con-
trast on the one hand between the description of a fixed and notable state,
and on the other, the purely hypothetical reconstruction of its genesis,
which had only heuristic value. The creation of the world by a divine crafts-
man (a demiurge) in Timaeus was, to all appearances, a way of making ex-
plicit, by listing them in the succession of operations of creation, the state
of eternal things. This is how most of the ancient exegetes of Plato con-
ceived of his cosmogonal dialogue, beginning with the ancient Academy,
an interpretation that was to become rooted in tradition.6 By contrast,
modern science claims to recount a story that actually occurred: paleon-
tology does this for living things, geology for the matter that makes up our
planet, and astrophysics for the entire universe.
CO S M O LO G Y
Unlike the meaning I assign the two preceding concepts, what I mean here
by cosmology is slightly different from what the word usually conveys. In
fact, I use it to mean that mix of cosmography and cosmogony which as I
said recent theories have rendered necessary. I prefer to reserve the term
cosmology for a specific use. The meaning I will use, as is implied by the
word logos, is not that of a simple discourse, but an account of the world in
which a reflection on the nature of the world as a world must be expressed.
We consider as cosmological a discourse, whether expressed or not (in the
latter case one might speak of an “experience”), in which that which makes
the world a world—what one might call “worldliness”—is not presup-
posed, but, on the contrary, becomes implicitly or explicitly a question to
be raised. It is thus necessary that the world be explicitly posited and, al-
ready, named. The presence of a word of course does not imply the pres-
ence of a concept, but its absence indicates at the very least that the con-
cept has not yet been thematicized. I will therefore not enter into the
in-depth examination of so-called primitive “world-views” in which the
word is not present; or I will mention them only in order to show the back-
ground from which human thought has had to detach itself to formulate
an idea of the world, and to give it its name.
Thus a reflexive element is necessarily present in any cosmology,
whereas its absence is in no way an impediment in a cosmography or a cos-
mogony, where it would even be out of place. A cosmology must take ac-
count of its own possibility, and of the primary condition of its existence,
that is, the presence in the world of a subject capable of experiencing it as
 Introduction
such—the human being. A cosmology must therefore necessarily imply
something like an anthropology. An anthropology is not just a collection
of considerations that might be made about certain dimensions of human
existence—the social, economic, or anatomical dimensions, and so on.
Nor is it limited to a theory that seeks to isolate the essence of the human
being; it also encompasses a reflection on the way in which man can fully
realize what he is—an ethics, therefore. I will not be focusing on the suc-
cession of various theories concerning the make-up of the physical uni-
verse, on the one hand because that work has already been done many
times; and on the other because I do not feel I am competent to do so. On
the other hand, I will attempt to reveal what might be called the experi-
enced cosmology of pre-modern man.
In the sense I am using it, the word “cosmology” implies an opening
onto an anthropology. Is this, then, some violence done to the language?
Or worse, an attempt to reduce cosmology to a simple “vision of the
world,” a necessarily subjective one—whether the bearer is an individual
or a society?
Let us begin by noting that the meaning of the word “world” is often
anthropological. It is clear that it is increasingly used to designate human
phenomena. We must examine this semantic evolution, which is itself the
symptom of a revolution in mentalities. For us, therefore, “the world” des-
ignates the entire earth, considered as the resting-place of humanity, the
oikoumenē, or society, even a part of it, the most distinguished social layer
(a “man of the world”); the word can also designate a milieu (“the little
world of Don Camillo”). This meaning, whether or not it is accurate, has
however become the most common. For ultimately we almost never use
the word “world” any more to designate a physical reality as such. For that
use other words, such as “universe” or “cosmos,”7 have more or less replaced
it. Indeed, it happens that we designate cosmic realities as “the world,” or
as “worlds,” in the plural form—precisely when we evoke the “plurality of
worlds.” But we only do so if those realities are considered to be inhabit-
able by humanity, or imagined to be peopled with hypothetical beings that
would be analogous to humans (“war of the worlds”). Must we then con-
clude that the metaphorical use of the term has contaminated to such as
extent the true meaning of the word that it has become incapable of being
of use?
In fact, it is important to see that the word “world” is not itself free from
all metaphor. A word does not perhaps exist to designate all of physical re-
ality without implying a specific perspective on that reality. We can show
Introduction 
this for the term “universe,” which accentuates the way in which that
whole is turned toward a unity, as if focused on it. I will be dealing here
only with the word “world.” We can see the appearance of its metaphori-
cal character if we go back to its origins, and in order to do this I will now
made a detour back through history.
 Introduction
Chapter 
Prehistory: A Pre-Cosmic Wisdom
Human thought does not begin with the Greeks. We classify them among
the “Ancients,” but they themselves were aware of being latecomers, or
“children.”1 And it was not only within the lineage that resulted in Greek
civilization that humans were thinking beings. However, the history I
wish to recount here is that of a specific phylum, that of Western Civi-
lization, that passes through Greece, experiencing a decisive turning point
there. This is why I will limit myself to a few remarks about the civiliza-
tions that were in fact in contact with Greece and which might have in-
fluenced it, such as those of the ancient Near East. One must not rule out
the possibility, however, that an inquiry relative to ancient China or India,
for example, might yield similar results. My goal, however, is primarily to
create the background of the painting upon which Greece will stand out.
I will be forced to proceed at second hand, as I do not have direct access to
the documents left by those civilizations. There are very few philosophers,
by the way, who have reflected on the various forms of wisdom that pre-
ceded the period during which tradition places the birth of their disci-
pline. They are paradoxically even rarer now that we possess the means to
see that wisdom more directly than through the eyes of later civilizations,
that is, since the deciphering of their scripts. Kant and Hegel saw Egypt
from what the Greeks had reported about it. Among later authors I know
of very few aside from Eric Voegelin (–) who have established an
in-depth study of the civilizations of the ancient Near East based upon re-
cent discoveries.2
We can group the phenomena belonging to these civilizations together
under the first two headings that I have just distinguished, beginning with
cosmography. They each created their own specific image of the world.
There is little need to describe them here, even less to distinguish them:
for example, while Egypt and Mesopotamia both represented the inhab-
ited Earth as a flat disk floating on a primordial watery surface, those two
ancientwithin a circle—two images that
a familiar drawing by Leonardo di Vinci ingeniously attempts to combine.
The human form, presented as a chi (X), imitates not only the Cross of
Christ, but the intersection of the circles of the soul which, according to
the Timaeus, defines the world.64
I will not examine this theme in greater detail, either its complete
historical journey or all of its aspects. In particular I will leave aside that
which nevertheless constitutes the best-known developments to which it
leads, that is, the careful listing of more or less arbitrary parallels between
the parts of the human body and those of the physical universe (the so-
called “melothesy”). This is found in Antiquity,65 then in the Middle Ages,
among the Jews66 as well as among the Christians67 and Muslims.68
There is, however, an idea that concerns this study more directly: that
the correspondence between the two worlds—the large and the small—is
a sign of the presence in both of one and the same wisdom. The idea is
found in Galen.69 Later, some thinkers insisted on the fact that the true
principle of resemblance between the world and man is the presence in
man of an intelligence that communicates with that of The One who cre-
ated the world. This idea is found in Judah Halevi and Maimonides.70
 The Medieval Model
There is an occasionally recurring idea that seems even more interest-
ing to me, which accentuates the theoretical aspect of a use of the micro-
cosm: man contains within himself what he needs to know the entire uni-
verse. He constitutes a summary, a “magic mirror” in which every reality
can be known. As the astrologer Manilius expressed at the beginning of
our era: “What is surprising in the fact that men can know the world, they
for whom there is a world in themselves (quibus est et mundus in ipsis), and
each is a copy of God on a reduced scale.”71 Worldliness is so to speak in-
side of man. Thus a knowledge of oneself logically leads to knowledge of
all things. After Porphyry, this idea is found in Kindı̄, the Brethren of
Purity, and Joseph Ibn S� addı̄q, who interprets the famous verse Job
:—“from my flesh I shall see God”—in that sense.72
It remains to be explained why all things are found in man. One might
assume that the soul knew all things before it was incarnated into a par-
ticular body. This idea is Platonic—even if Plato himself had his sources.
It goes back to the Meno, of course, but also to the Timaeus. The latter
work gives a mythical representation of the notion by explaining that
souls, before being incarnated into the body of man, tour the universe on
the back of a star.73 Man knows everything because his soul, before it is
born, has traveled, or seen, the great world in its entirety.
One can also find an answer by assuming that everything was contained
in primitive Adam, and that God drew it out of him and made him see it.
Let us recall, for example, the famous passage from Midrash Rabbah on
Genesis in which Adam sees all generations and their scholars (dōr dōr we-
doršaw).74 It is in this spirit that the Brethren of Purity proposed an un-
usual interpretation of a famous Koranic passage, the one on the pre-
eternal Pact (mı̄t�āq) between God and the descendants of Adam.75 In the
Koran, God “brought forth descendants from the loins of Adam’s chil-
dren.” For the Brethren, God showed Adam all of creation. According to
perhaps the clearest passage on the subject: “The Creator . . . created man
‘in the most beautiful stature,’ formed him in the most perfect shape, and
made his shape a mirror for his soul, so that he might see the shape of the
whole world in it. Indeed, since the Creator . . . wanted to inform the hu-
man soul about the treasures of its worlds and show it the world in its to-
tality, and since He knew that the world is vast and great, and that man
does not have the ability to go around the world and see it all, because of
the brevity of his life and the vastness of the inhabited world, He decided
in His wisdom to create for him a little world to reflect the great world. He
thus included in the little world all there is in the big world, showed it to
him and made it known to him. He . . . then said: ‘He made them testify
The Standard Vision of the World 
against themselves (ašhadahum ‘alāâ anfusihim): Am I not your Lord?’
They all responded: ‘Yes.’”76 The Brethren daringly reinterpreted a scene
that is fundamental in Islam. It explains the primitive faith in the single
God (Allah) of humanity, which was drawn from the loins of its father, the
first man. Successive prophets, up to their “seal,” Muhammad, scarcely
made anything of that faith other than to recall it to the forgetful sons of
Adam: the primordial alliance, transhistorical, in pre-eternity. The Brethren
interpreted the “testify against (‘alā) oneself ” as a testifying based on a
consideration of oneself. The root ̌ is called upon: “to cause to testify”
becomes “to cause to see,” whereas the Koran does not say that the men
drawn in an instant from the loins of Adam had seen anything of creation.
The passage is commented on again and again in the Risāâla Jāmi‘a, which
is supposed to clarify all of the epistles, and in which I have counted as
many as six such occurrences.77
The lists with which the Ancients and the Medievals illustrate the idea
of microcosm can be forced and tedious. However, they do reveal an im-
portant mindset: man is so far from being a stranger in the world because
he is woven from the same material as the world. In a sense, the imitation
of the world thus only solidifies an already assured kinship. It will then be
a matter only of directing the innate resemblance that connects man to the
world toward that which makes the world worthy to be called a cosmos,
that is, the celestial world.
B. Influences
And yet this celestial world is not confined to the role of waiting passively
to be imitated, either. It is equally active, in that it exercises influences over
the world below.
The first influence is massive and invokes one-time occurrences. It is
the object of the theory of cataclysms, tidal waves, floods of celestial fire
encountered beginning with Plato, which was subsequently developed by
later thinkers. In Plato the theory aims above all to account for the pro-
gress of the sciences and philosophy.78 Next, it serves to refute an objec-
tion against the idea of the eternity of the world. Its adversaries assert that
if the world were eternal, progress in the sciences and technology should
have attained an extraordinary level, and the maximum knowledge pos-
sible would have already been attained.79 The response invokes setbacks
consecutive to cataclysms, which have allowed only a few unpolished be-
ings to survive, shepherds whose lives in the mountains shelter them from
floods.80 These catastrophes can also be seen as means to prevent excessive
 The Medieval Model
population growth. Such is the case in the writings of several medieval au-
thors, who were more or less clear forerunners of Malthus.81
Let us consider the example of al-Biruni. He begins by stating the prin-
ciple that every living being has a tendency to grow and multiply, then
mentions the images of the farmer who pulls up weeds and of the arborist
who prunes dead branches. In addition, the same process, applied in those
examples through human effort, is found in nature. Bees kill unproductive
consumers. “Nature does the same; except that it makes no distinction, be-
cause its action is unique.” In trees nature eliminates superfluous leaves
and fruits and prevents them from doing that which they were intended to
do. Biruni continues: “Similarly, this world below, when it is corrupted
due to a large population, or is on the verge of being so, possesses a rector
(mudabbir), and the providence [that it exercises] over the whole is pres-
ent in all parts of it [the world below], so that it sends toward it someone
who diminishes the great numbers and stops the matter of evil.”82 This textis not without its difficulties. Does providence act like nature, which does
not distinguish between the good and the evil? The biblical flood was se-
lective. The cataclysms to which the passage alludes destroy what Biruni
calls “the matter of evil”; not evil itself, but the power of the opposites—
which is also, therefore, the matter of good. What is this rector of the
world, which also exercises something like providence (mudabbir / tadbı̄r)?
Biruni doesn’t call it God. Elsewhere, on the basis of the existence of ex-
ceptions, he suggests the possibility of the existence of a demiurge and
governor other than nature, which he designates using expressions that
apply only to God.83 In any event, the issue has been raised: the issue of an
influence of a celestial power (regardless of how one imagines its content)
over the sublunary, an influence that is believed to possess a moral value,
acting as it does to promote good or, at the very least, to curb evil.
There is a second way that the celestial acts upon the terrestrial. Its in-
fluence is no longer effected through a one-time intervention, but it per-
manently weighs upon the earth. The sky exercises an influence over the
earth, in the strict sense.84 This is the foundation of astrological theory,
which, although it was not followed unanimously by pre-modern thinkers,
was accepted by a comfortable majority of those thinkers as a legitimate
field of knowledge. This was the case, as we know, of the founding fathers
of modern astronomy, such as Kepler, although many had reservations
concerning the lack of freedom implied by astral determinism. But the no-
tion of influence is broader than its astrological application, and ancient
and medieval man were quick to admit the reality of a certain parallelism
between the sky and the earth, and of an influence of the former over the
The Standard Vision of the World 
latter. This idea is broader than the word that expresses it, influentia,
which, perhaps in too concrete a fashion, evokes a flowing. It is also trans-
lated by the words that designate “power” (dunamis, virtus).
Early on, one finds a passage by Aristotle in which the Philosopher
presents his cosmology as if in miniature.85 The Sky’s effect on the Earth
is limited here, however, to a very elementary, and empirically obvious,
awareness that the annual cycle of the Sun—usually the seasons—is ac-
companied by a renewal or a numbing of the life of sublunary beings.
Elsewhere, Aristotle remarks in passing that the world that surrounds the
earth is “of a single piece with the revolutions on high, so that all that it
has the power to do, is steered from on high.” Subsequently, even if the
material cause of sublunary phenomena, and above all, of the meteors be-
ing discussed here, is the four elements, the efficient cause is “the power
(dunamis) of the [phenomena] that are always moving.”86 With this shift
to the plural there is the possibility of a more nuanced causality. If all the
celestial bodies play a role, the variety of their movements, which is almost
infinite, enables one to account for the diversity of earthly facts with less
obvious arbitrariness. In addition, Stoic cosmology enables the introduc-
tion of the idea of a unity of the whole universe, an organism linked by
the same spirit (pneuma) in which all that affects the part must affect the
whole, through com-passion (sumpatheia).
Through influences, the world calls on man, as if magnetically, to allow
himself to be infused by it. One must still proceed to making a prudent
distinction between good influences from on high and supposedly evil in-
fluences. In any case, it is the superior that influences the inferior. Man can
in no way modify the order of celestial phenomena. Again in the fifteenth
century, for an Aristotelian (and even an Averroist) such as Elijah del
Medigo, the claims of the Kabbalists to “repair (tiqqûn)” divine realities
through practices analogous to magic was scandalous, to the point that he
had to reassert that the influence could only be exercised in a single direc-
tion: “The superior [beings] act upon us but are not subjected to any ac-
tion from us; it is they who direct the inferior world through the power of
God, and they are not directed by inferior beings.”87
The idea of a celestial influence does not have just a spatial dimension,
in that the superior flows onto the inferior. It is doubled by a chronologi-
cal dimension: the circular temporality that rules the celestial bodies is
believed to govern the linear temporality of human history.88 In this way
it suggests a cyclical interpretation of the historical future and thus rela-
tivizes the aspect of adventure without return that human history might
assume.89 The result is something like a cosmologization of history. Con-
 The Medieval Model
versely, the Christian polemics against astrology, as we shall see, accom-
panied a historization of cosmology.90
C. Erect Posture
Finally, the necessity of imitating supralunary reality provides our being
with the very final cause that accounts for its structure: the very structure of
our bodies, detached from the humility of the earth and aimed toward the
sky, enables us to contemplate the stars. Nature has thus drawn us upright
so that we might be inspired by the example of what it has produced that is
most “cosmic.” The idea of contemplation of the sky thus intersects, though
it is not confused with, a very ancient theme, that man’s erect posture is one
of his advantages over the rest of the animals.91 Indeed, erect posture is a
necessary but not sufficient condition for contemplating the physical sky.92
The theme of the advantage of erect posture can be traced to the most
ancient of times. When a scientific explanation has been sought, the fact
was first considered to be an element of a physiological system. Aristotle
developed the theme lavishly, placing it within a highly nuanced context
that combines the physical properties of the elements and the reciprocal
implications of the various organs, in particular the hand and the vocal
tract, which form a system.93 On this last point, Aristotle’s ideas are echoed
by Gregory of Nyssa, who probably borrowed them from Poseidonius.
They are found in a modern anthropologist like André Leroi-Gourhan,
who, curiously, does not mention Aristotle, but cites Gregory.94
In the Arab world, the physical explanations emphasize the balance of
the four humours in the human body, as in the work of Pseudo-Apollonius
of Tyana or the famous treatise on magic, Picatrix.95 One might be content
with an immanentist explanation, like Galen’s.96 But his criticism misfired
and did not prevent the introduction of a final cause. Aristotle had not
clearly drawn a conclusion from his treatment of the orientation of the hu-
man gaze toward the sky. Medieval authors connected the Aristotelian de-
duction of human morphology to its assumed final cause, which was lack-
ing in Aristotle’s work. They defined man (anthrōpos) using a fantastic
etymology, as the one who looks up (anō-athrein). Plato gave this explana-
tion in a way that was undoubtedly not entirely serious.97 But it is reiter-
ated with no apparent irony by an entire series of authors, such as Isidore
of Seville or, inspired by him, Abelard.98 The same idea is expressed in an-
other image from the Timaeus, of man as a celestial plant having roots to-
ward the sky. It is present in Philo. In the Middle Ages it is found in the
Christian twelfth century, in Islamic lands, and in Kabbalistic Judaism.99
The Standard Vision of the World 
If the name of man constitutes something like a program for his action,
that program is preformed in his very structure. The erect posture is an in-
vitation to stand up toward the sky. The idea is present starting with the
Timaeus, and it was passed on to the most diverse authors through the cen-
turies. It is present in the work of the Greek-educated Jew Philo, who in-
dicates very clearly the final cause, contemplation of the sky.100The theme is ubiquitous in Latin literature. It is found in Cicero,101 but
above all in two verses by Ovid, which are very often cited: “Whereas the
other animals, crouching on the earth, look at the earth, He gave man a
sublime face, ordered him to look at the sky and to direct his raised face to
the stars.”102 It is adopted, sometimes along with the quotation from Ovid,
by several later authors.103 Finally, Macrobius adds the notion, which is
also Platonic, of the resemblance between the celestial sphere and the hu-
man head.104
These themes went from paganism to patristic literature, in which they
are frequently found, in Greek beginning with the Letter to Diognetus,
and in Latin beginning with Minucius Felix.105 Their common ground is
in commenting on the biblical passage asserting that man was created in
God’s image (Genesis :). We do not know clearly how the sacred writer
himself conceived man’s resemblance to God. Modern exegetes are not
in agreement on this point. Nor does the question receive a unanimous
response from the Church Fathers or medieval writers: is it a matter, for
example, of reason? or of freedom? In any case, the theme of standing
upright according to the Timaeus is sometimes reproduced with very little
modification. This is the case in Lactantius, in a passage that is in effect a
summary of the Timaeus: the erect posture that allows man to contemplate
the sky is for him a reminder of his origin; his mind is lodged in the citadel
of his head, which is of a perfectly round shape to imitate the universe.
Proof of the nobility of the origin of man are “right reason, his sublime
condition, and his face which he has in common with God the father and
which is very close to His.”106 However, the celestial origin of man does
not assume the preexistence of souls, but creation by God, who is in the
heavens. A certain murkiness persists as to the sublimis status: is it a mat-
ter of the rectitude of the stature, or simply a vague “dignity”?
Most often, however, the theme of standing upright is placed within
the context of a general anthropology,107 into which a new organizing
principle, the tale of creation according to Genesis, was introduced. One
then sees several inflections. On the one hand, the theme only appears in
second place, after it has been declared that resemblance to God is not
through the body, but through intelligence, and only as a supplementary
 The Medieval Model
argument. This is very clear in Augustine: man is not the image of God
through his body, but indeed through his intelligence; erect posture is at
most a sign of that superiority, but does not confer it.108 On the other hand,
the rectitude of the human body is passed over toward that of which it
claims only to be the image, that is, of the intellect. The direction upward
becomes that of the “sky” in general, without further specifics. The “supe-
rior things” are not the celestial bodies, but are phenomena that only the
intellect is capable of grasping (“ideas”), or spiritual phenomena (Christ
after the Ascension, next to the Father).109 Their order is no longer the as-
tral kosmos, but the logical system of intelligible things. Thus, according to
Cassiodorus, man is upright so that he can contemplate superior things,
that is, intelligible things (ad res supernas et rationabiles intuendas), whose
harmonious disposition reveals profound mysteries to us.110
Augustine takes up the Platonic theme that the contemplation of the
material sky does not raise the soul, but on the contrary, fixes it on the
ground. He has a very revealing formula: man is upright so that he can see
not the visible ground, but the sky, which is “the principle of invisible
things (principium invisibilium).”111 One can note a subtle reversal, but one
heavy with meaning: the sky was previously all that was visible, according
to the constantly reiterated etymology that connected its name, ouranos,
with the adjective signifying “visible” (horatos).112 It is henceforth, on the
contrary, the paradigm of all that is invisible.
Finally, two other inflections appear in patristic literature: superiority
over the animals becomes the reason for a moral imperative. This is the
case in Basil of Caesarea.113 That superiority is explicitly drawn toward the
legitimization of man’s dominion over the animals, in Gregory of Nyssa
and others.114
Conversely, man’s abandonment of his dignity forces him to lose both
his moral rectitude and the upright posture that is the sign of it. Hence the
theme of the curved soul, which is the opposite of that of the rectitude of
the soul. The term came from Persius: “Oh souls curved toward the ground
and incapable of celestial things (o curvae in terris animae et caelestium
inanes).”115 The idea also comes from the anthropology of Plato’s Timaeus.
It remained present among pagans beginning with Sallust.116 It then went
on to the Church Fathers, and is finally found among medieval authors.117
CO S M O LO G Y A N D H U M A N D I G N I T Y
The predominant current of ancient and medieval thought only rarely saw
human dignity as resting on cosmological factors. One author who did,
The Standard Vision of the World 
however, was the Jewish apologist Saadia Gaon (d. ), who saw man’s
place at the center of the created world as an indication. He points out that
nature has the custom of placing what is most precious at the center: the
seed in the middle of the leaves, the pit at the center of the fruit, the yolk
in the egg, the heart in man, the visual spirit in the eye. And the earth is
at the center of the celestial spheres. The last object of creation thus must
be on the earth. One can eliminate the elements, which are inanimate, and
the animals, which are irrational. Only man remains.118
Saadia establishes a certain anthropocentrism on a geocentric cosmol-
ogy. All the same, he is not defending a naive teleology: his discussion of
botany does not envision nature from the point of view of its usefulness to
man. And yet, the rigor of his reasoning is mitigated by a shift in the cri-
terion. Saadia begins with the thesis, arrived at by induction, of the natural
centrality of the most important. But once he reaches the earth, he aban-
dons the criterion of centrality for that of life, and disregards the inert. He
then takes as a criterion reason, which enables him to disregard animals.
We find a similar idea in the Ismaili propagandist Nāsir-i Khusraw (d.
): “The stars and the sky are, due to divine imperative, like the servants
of natures [the elements], for they lavish advantages on them; they revolve
around the natures like servants and slaves that surround their master. In
another way, the natures are like the slaves of the sky and the stars, since
they derive their power from them in order to become rich.”119 The text
takes away with one hand what it has just given with the other: the supe-
rior is at the service of the inferior only from a certain point of view,
quickly counterbalanced by another, less metaphorical one. The same idea
is found in Hildegarde von Bingen (d. ) and in Ibn Arabi (d. ).120
Some authors explain the structure of the world by God’s intent to install
man on it and thus to render it inhabitable by him. This is especially the
case in the physics of the sublunary world, it being primarily the dwelling
place of man. Thus the existence of emerged land caused a problem, as
soon as one conceived of the elements as forming concentric spheres. Wa-
ter, lighter than earth, should submerge the earth everywhere if the earth
had a regular form. It is the irregularity of the earth’s surface that enables
some of its parts to be dry, and thus habitable. The problem continued to
torment certain medieval thinkers, such as Avicenna, and remained active
until the eighteenth century.121 The translator of Maimonides, Samuel Ibn
Tibbon, used the problem as a pretext for an entire book, written between
 and , in which digressions occupy more space than the solution
that’sactually proposed.122 Some authors attributed the fact to a cause other
than nature, that is, divine Providence.123 Others, such as Miskawayh, for
 The Medieval Model
example, invoke the influence of celestial bodies.124 Averroes attributes the
emergence of the earth to the action of the stars, and above all of the sun.
The stars, which are themselves eternal as individuals (their individual-
ity not being distinguished, moreover, from their being as species), only
maintain the perpetuity of sublunary species. They thus see to it that the
animal species are preserved, whereas individuals disappear. Similarly,
they assure permanence as to the fact of emerging earth: even if their dis-
tribution might change, there will always be a balance between dry and
wet surfaces. Averroes does not precisely explain here the way the celestial
bodies play their role. He does so elsewhere, attributing the emergence of
the land to the Sun, but with the cooperation of the fixed stars. Their
greater numbers in the north would explain the unequal distribution of the
emerged land, more vast in the arctic hemisphere.125
Once the influence of celestial bodies over a phenomenon that makes hu-
man life possible had been established, only one step remained to be taken
to make that life a final cause, and to put the stars in the service of man.
That step was taken more than a century before Averroes by al-Biruni.126
After summing up the argument over the respective natures of water and
earth, he maintains that the emergence of the earth was due to divine will.
It was because God intended to create man that he began by giving the
earth a shape that was different from that which its nature would have con-
ferred upon it. He then cites a lost passage by T� ābit Ibn Qurra in which
the author is seen as resolving in his own way the old problem of the salin-
ity of the oceans, which never ceased to preoccupy ancient and medieval
thinkers.127 Here, too, he brings in a teleology: the salinity enabled an
avoidance of decay which would have been dangerous to man. Since man
needed fresh water for himself and his domestic animals, God put the sun
and moon in his service, assigning them the task of putting the water in
motion, by making it evaporate. The goal of the movements of the celes-
tial bodies and their variety was to spread heat all the way to the center of
the world. It therefore seemed that the ultimate goal of the celestial was
the terrestrial.
In the Christian world, this relationship was asserted more or less
clearly. We find the idea that the central placement of man is not com-
pletely humiliating, since being entirely below enables him to receive all
the influences that come from the upper spheres. In this way, the pure pas-
sivity of the receiver is turned around to take on a more positive meaning.
We find this idea in William of Conches and in Bonaventure.128 We owe
a particularly interesting text to Robert Grosseteste. He writes: “All things
are for man, that is, so that human generation is carried out up until the
The Standard Vision of the World 
completeness of the body of Christ which is the Church is accomplished.
The movement of the skies is thus only for the generation of man. . . .
And the movement by which the heavens produce generation in these in-
ferior regions consists only in making the star or the stars situated in the
sky itself [the sphere] turn around. Indeed, the revolution of the stars
around the earth is by itself the efficient cause of generation. Now, the sky,
apart from the star, is everywhere similar to itself, and it could not influ-
ence (immutare) inferior things in a certain situation rather than in another
one if there were not a star in it. This is why every movement of the sky
through which no star would move would contribute nothing to genera-
tion, and by this token its movement would be useless.”129 Cosmology is
very explicitly placed in the service of the history of salvation: the world
only endures to ensure that the greatest number of elect be reached. But
Grosseteste deduces from that old patristic idea what is necessary to grad-
ually clarify a very precise astronomical problem. The static structure of
the world must be able to encourage generation, which is not cyclical, but
directed toward an end.
Among Jewish authors, Gershonides (d. ) devotes an entire chap-
ter to the influence of the spheres on the inferior world. He uses an argu-
ment that is very close to that of Grosseteste. The chapter is constructed
as a disputatio following the Scholastic method. The objection—videtur
quod non—to circumvent is the impossibility for the superior in the uni-
verse to be in the service of the inferior. Aristotle’s authority—sed contra—
sets forth that the stars are the cause of things below. Gershonides pre-
sents a subtle argument while following a guiding question: Why do the
celestial spheres contain stars? The fifth substance is simple. Here below,
the diversity of the organs in a living being is explained by the complexity
of the elements that make it up, as well as by the necessity with which it
lives to conclude its existence in perfection. But the celestial body, simple
and perfect, does not need to be organized. Then why is it spread out in
spheres? Why do they contain stars? Why is there the diversity of colors
in the light they emit? The response: “In so far as the spheres apprehend
something of the law, order and rightness of the sub-lunar world and as a
result of this very apprehension they desire to do something to perfect this
order, it is necessary that they have an organ [or instrument], to accom-
plish this activity, and this organ is the planet or star. This suggestion,
however, implies that the stars or planets are not in the sphere for their
own sake but [are there in order] to bring about what the apprehension of
the spheres necessitates with respect to the perfection of sub-lunar phe-
nomena.”130 The objection is resolved by a distinction: the clarity of the
 The Medieval Model
stars is owed to the things on earth, but their substance is owed to itself.
The idea that the influences to be exercised over man are the final cause of
the universe continued for quite some time.131
. . .
According to this line of thought, man and the world are connected by a
reciprocal involvement. The being-in-the-world possesses a relevance be-
fore a level of existential experience; it is significant in cosmography be-
fore it is so in a cosmology. What is more, cosmology is guided, prefigured
by cosmography.
To say what man is is to rank him in an order that is spatial, dynamic
and axiological. As for simple localization, it is not without meaning for
man, and for his very humanity, that he be located on the earth and under
the sky: his very place is enough to assign him a specific value, a value that
is rather weak, moreover, compared to the rest of the world, and which be-
comes almost nothing when it is compared to that of celestial phenomena.
And, when other factors come to increase that value, as is the case for me-
dieval man, they no longer relate to cosmography. As for the dynamic re-
lationship between man and that which surrounds him, man is not simply
in the world; the world is also in man. It gives rhythm to his history, even
prevents that history from gaining independence by forcing the develop-
ment of human achievements to periodically return to zero. It defines the
aspirations of man. It directs his physical structure.
In all of this there is scarcely anything that modern man might conde-
scendingly call a naive anthropomorphism. Man is just as much cosmo-
morphous, so to speak, as the cosmos is anthropomorphous, The cosmos
exists in function of man, granted. But it would be too much to say that it
is for him. First, because man is not alone, but is preceded by more noble
beings, stars or angels. Then, more dramatically, because man is so in-
tensely cosmic that one might wonder whether the distinction that first
places man oppositethe world only to then relate them to each other can
be maintained to the end; it is rather the cosmos that affirms itself in man.
Thus we have seen that for thinkers of late Antiquity and the Middle
Ages, man’s being was cosmic from the outset; we will now see that what
man ought to be, man’s task, was decidedly just as much so.
The Standard Vision of the World 
Chapter 
An Ethical Cosmos
This presentation of the way the world was imagined in Late Antiquity
and the Middle Ages is not merely a description of things as they were. It
also has an inseparable ethical significance. I am therefore well aware of
the arbitrary nature of the separation I have made here between the phys-
ical and the ethical aspects of things.
During the period in question, some thinkers were aware of the rele-
vance of the image of the physical world to matters of practical philosophy.
This elevation to the reflective realm is present from the beginning in the
works of Plato. In the Sophist, he shows that the way one conceives of the
world depends on the type of person one is.1 In the Laws, book  devel-
ops Plato’s theology in terms of moral and political considerations. This
awareness continued for a long time. Thus in Abd al-Latif al-Baghdadi
(d. ): “The view of Plato and Zeno is the opposite of the previous view
[Democritus]. For they assume that nothing in this world is outside Prov-
idence and that everything is filled with God and that He penetrates all
things. This is excellent and very true. It is the view to be followed by the
great mass and one which one must believe. It leads to orderly political life
and social harmony. The prophets have proposed it and the divine books ex-
pressed it. In my opinion one must believe in it.”2
A H A P P Y WO R L D
Ethical determinations can be applied to the physical. The world is
content with its fate; one can say that nothing affects the good condition
of the world, even if not everything is perfect in the sublunary. Thus, it is
reasonable to say that the world—the entire world—experiences happi-
ness (eudaimonia).3
But this world is not specifically the one in which we live, surrounded
by plants and animals, the world where the living are born and die, the
world where, far from willingly accommodating one another, animals and
cities seek to overcome each other or, at least, are in competition to ap-
propriate important resources. For the Ancients, that was only one aspect
of the whole. What occurs around us is less the rule than the exception.
Where the world truly is what it is, this battle does not occur. The place
where the world appears in its true light is the celestial realm. The most
perfect harmony reigns there. It does so is a figurative sense, but the same
is true in a literal sense as well. The Pythagorean idea of the “harmony of
the spheres,” even if it was not shared by Aristotle and his philosopher dis-
ciples, is an integral part of a poetic vision of the world, and it was perhaps
accompanied by musical illustrations.4 Nietzsche rightly sees an image of
the “moral significance of existence.”5
Regardless of the details, one fact is obvious: order is the characteristic
of the supralunary incomparably more than of the sublunary. Aristotle
says this clearly: “There is much clearer evidence of definite ordering in
the heavenly bodies than there is in us; for what is mortal bears the marks
of change and chance.”6 A later philosopher expresses the separation of the
two realms with an image: “The course of the moon is the isthmus (isth-
mos) of immortality and generation. All that is above it and upon it, the
race of the gods occupies, that which is below the moon [is occupied by
the race] of discord (neikos) and nature.”7
Augustine uses this image as well. He emphasizes the difference be-
tween the human bodies that hide the movements of the soul, thus en-
abling lies, and the celestial bodies. Human bodies are carnal. In fact:
“[After they sinned] God changed [Adam and Eve’s] bodies into this
mortal flesh in which deceitful hearts are hidden. For we should not be-
lieve that thoughts could be hidden in those heavenly bodies, as they lie
hidden in these bodies. Rather as some states of soul are apparent on the
countenance, and especially in the eyes, so I think that in the clarity and
simplicity of those heavenly bodies absolutely no states of the soul are hid-
den.”8 The underlying image is interesting: the sky is that which, in na-
ture, cannot lie. It is the unveiled face of nature.
Thus, cosmography has direct axiological relevance: good and evil are
divided up just like the “above” and the “below,” like the earth and the sky.
We find an extremely clear formulation of this point of view, one leading
toward Gnosticism, in the Corpus Hermeticum: “There is nothing good on
An Ethical Cosmos 
the earth; there is nothing evil in the sky.”9 To assume that something evil
can be located in the sky appears as more than a mistake; it is blasphe-
mous.10 Alexander of Lycopolis in his polemics against the Manichaeans,
who asserted that the celestial bodies contained evil even if that evil were
moderate, points out that: “In their view evil is conceived as disorder and
random motion. But the heavenly things are always the same and in the
same condition, and one cannot find fault with any of the planets for want-
ing to remain longer than its allotted time in some sign of the zodiac, nor
with any of the fixed stars for not staying in the self-same position and for
moving one degree to the right in the course of a century, and for not con-
tinuing its circling around with the revolution of the universe.”11
EV I L A S T H E EXC EP T I O N
In the intellectual universe of Late Antiquity and the Middle Ages, or, in
any case, in its dominant current, one can find traces of a certain funda-
mental attitude voiced from all directions. It constitutes a recurrent theme
in the ethical attitude of this period: the evil that reigns here on earth is
basically only an exception. The rule that it confirms is manifest in the
regularity and the majestic order of celestial movements. It is owing to that
order that the world deserves its Greek name of kosmos, which rightly
means “order,” good arrangement, arranged and harmoniously articulated
totality, etc. Here below it is possible that everything is falling apart;
above, “all is order there, and beauty.”
Now, the place where everything functions well is incomparably larger
than the tiny spot where we pine away, at the center of the world, that is,
for the Ancients, at the lowest place, below everything else.12 Evil can very
easily be unleashed where we exist, to the point of giving the impression
that the gods are neglecting men.13 But it remains an almost invisible ex-
ception, if one compares it to the overwhelming majority of Good. So says
Aristotle already when he expresses the idea in the language of the law:
“For only that region of the sensible world which immediately surrounds
us is always in process of destruction and generation; but this is—so to
speak—not even a fraction of the whole, so that it would have been juster
to acquit this part of the world because of the other part, than to condemn
the other because of this.”14
Immediately following Aristotle, Theophrastus reiterates the same
idea: “But to say that in general the good is something rare and found only
in a few things, while the evil is a great multitude, and does not consist
solely in indefiniteness and exist by way of matter, as is the case with the
 The Medieval Model
things of nature, is the act of a most ignorant person. For quite random is
the talk of those who speak of the whole of reality as Speusippus does when
he makes the valuable element (timion) to be something scanty, namely,
what is found in the region of the centre of the universe, the rest forming
the extremes and being to each side of the centre. Rather, reality in fact
is and always has been good (kalōs).”15 This cosmological passage con-
cludes with a declarationof ontological import, that is, the explicit iden-
tification of that which would later be called two transcendentals, the be-
ing and the good.
The idea is also found in the writings of Alexander of Aphrodisias. In
his treatise on the soul, he attempts an explanation of the presence of evil
in the world. He presents his solution in a central formula that uncannily
recalls a fundamental image from the ontology of Jean-Paul Sartre: noth-
ingness is spread out (paresparmenon) in the being. This explains the re-
laxed softness (atonia) and weakness (astheneia) that are the reality of all
that is not eternal. Except that, according to Alexander, this does not oc-
cur everywhere, but, on the contrary, only in exceptional circumstances:
“The non-being is not mixed into most beings, and, wherever it is, it isn’t
very important, either. It is a small part of things that are themselves a
small part of the whole. Among the beings, it is there where there is the
non-eternal. That is what surrounds the earth, and that place is very small
(elakhistos) compared to the entire world. Indeed, if the earth, according
to the astronomers, is like a point compared to all of the sky, and if the
non-being is found around it and in it, it is indeed something very small.”16
The idea is found again in the doxography on Aristotle, as for example
in the one most probably used by the Church Father Hippolytus to write
the chapter in which he associates Aristotle, as the source, with the heresy
of the Gnostic Basilides: “He [Aristotle] says that evil things are under the
auspices of the moon, and above the moon there are none.”17
Themistius is situated at a turning point. In religion, he remains a pa-
gan in the service of emperors who were already Christian; in philosophy,
his work, which paraphrases Aristotle, is located midway between pure
peripateticism and Neoplatonism. In one of his ceremonial speeches he
writes: “Order (taxis) is a sign not of weakness, but of a nature exempt
from change and disturbance. And that in the universe which is closest to
it enjoys the highest point of order. As for disturbance (tarakhē), tumult,
and agitation, they are found in a small part of the being, and relate to
things that, by a defective character (elleipsis) corresponding to their weak-
ness, are deprived of the name of being.”18
The idea, with nuances that we will see below, passed into the revealed
An Ethical Cosmos 
religions. Thus Augustine suggests that sin only occurs under the sky:
“Men sin under the sky, all the evil they do, men do under the sky.”19
The Brethren of Purity (tenth century, perhaps shortly after ) crit-
icize a form of dualism that they attribute to “certain Greek wise men” (no
doubt the Stoics) for whom the two principles are one, active, and the
other, passive: “The order of the world is clear for them, and they know the
harmony of the creation of the skies, in spite of their vastness, the grandeur
of their parts and the great number of the creatures that are found there;
they know that there is nothing above that is corruption and evil, and that
everything there is in the most beautiful order, the best hierarchical or-
dering and arrangement; they know that evil is found only in the world of
generation and corruption which is below the sphere of the moon, and even, evil,
in the world of generation and corruption, is found only in the plants and
animals, unlike the other [things] that exist, and not even at every mo-
ment, but at one moment and not another; and through causes that do not
derive from an agent following a primary intention, but following a defect
in the matter and an inability in it to receive good at every moment and in
every situation.”20
The idea is also in Avicenna, who alludes to it in his doctrine on evil.21
It is the thinking of a good Aristotelian, showing some Neoplatonism,
since he attributes evil to matter, which is incapable of receiving perfect
order.22 This ontological inferiority of evil transfers into the register of
quantity: “Evil things are very rare compared to existence since existence
is entirely or mostly Good. . . . Harmful effects and evil are only excep-
tions.”23 And this rarity of evil itself is translated in cosmological terms:
“The totality of the cause of evil is found only in that which is below the
sphere of the moon, and all that is below the sphere of the moon is in-
significant compared with the rest of being.”24
Finally, the idea is powerfully proclaimed by Maimonides in his polemics
against the doctor and free-thinker Râzî: “If man considered and repre-
sented to himself that which exists and knew the smallness of his part in
it, the truth would become clear and manifest to him. For this extensive
raving entertained by men with regard to the multitude of evils in the world
is not said by them to hold good with regard to the angels, or with regard
to the spheres and the stars, or with regard to the elements and the min-
erals and the plants composed of them, or with regard to the various species
of animals, but their whole thought only goes out to some individuals be-
longing to the human species. . . . The true way of considering (i‘tibār)
this is that all the existent individuals of the human species and, all the
more, those of the other species of animals are things of no value (qadar)
 The Medieval Model
at all in comparison with the whole that exists and endures. . . . [Man]
should not make the mistake of thinking that what exists is in existence
only for the sake of him as an individual. According to us, on the other
hand, . . . the species of man is the least in comparison to the superior ex-
istents—I refer to the spheres and the stars.”25 Râzî, the doctor, saw real-
ity as a huge hospital in which, by definition, the patients were in the ma-
jority: in the world, too, evil dominated good. Maimonides reestablished
the correct proportions by placing man within the whole of things. At
worst, evil affects only a tiny part of the whole. Good triumphs in the su-
perior world, which constitutes the rule; from the point of view of that
world, man is only a negligible exception.
Finally, the argument passed on to medieval and modern Christian
thinkers. St. Thomas Aquinas cites our passage from Avicenna. And in the
seventeenth century Leibniz quotes approvingly the text by Maimonides
that I have just reproduced above.26
T H E H ERE B ELO W
Once it was established that good was safely tucked away above the sphere
of the moon, nothing prevented ancient and medieval man from recogniz-
ing that evil affected the restricted realm in which he was confined with full
force and that it even formed an essential motivation in it. Thus the balance
among animal species rested on the way animals conducted themselves to-
ward each other, engaging in relationships of pure strength. Herodotus, for
example, knew that the overall survival of the animals was assured by the
ratio between their greater or lesser fertility and their predatory abilities.
The foresight (pronoiē) of the divine is thus seen to be quite capable (sophē):
the rabbit, fearful and without defenses, is fertile; the lioness, on the other
hand, gives birth only once, since the cub is only able to be born, it was be-
lieved, by tearing the womb with its claws.27 Lucretius knew that each liv-
ing being had some weapon or defense, without which it could not survive.28
The Ancients did not see man as an exception and had no illusions about
his natural goodness: Thucydides knew that man wanted all the power he
could obtain, and the dialogue he recounts between the Athenians and the
Melians provides us a vision alongside which Machiavelli appears to be al-
most naive.29 Ancient and medieval thinkers were not unaware that large
fish ate smaller fish.30 This example was even proverbial for them: it is seen
in the formula through which Indian thought expresses what we would
call the “law of the jungle”: the “logic of the fish” (mātsyanyāya).31 But ob-
servation of animal behavioracted as a negative example for human ethics.
An Ethical Cosmos 
Thus for Hesiod the example of the fishes is the model of what man
should not do.32 He is followed by Theophilus of Antioch and Basil of
Caesarea.33 Nemesius of Emesa, in a passage for which the editors do not
mention sources, qualifies by recalling that the food chain has an end: cer-
tain fish, the smallest ones, which he calls fukia, eat what might be called
the grass of the sea.34 The Talmudic rabbis evoke the risk of falling back
onto the law of the jungle to justify the necessity of government. Without
law, “men would eat each other alive.”35 In doing this they would not be
content with simply transgressing against the commandment that forbids
murder, but would even disregard the most basic of the Noachic laws for-
bidding “tearing someone’s limb off,”36 a command that distinguishes man
from the animal which throws itself on its prey to devour it raw.
It seems, however, that authors were sometimes tempted to propose the
balance of nature as a model for human behavior. We have at least one
example of this, in one of the principal treatises on political philosophy
by al-Farabi (d. ).37 It deals with opinions held by the inhabitants of
ignorant or perplexed cities, rivals of the virtuous city he describes. Farabi
speaks of it as relating to ancient opinions—no doubt those of the Greeks—
but he names no authors. The opinions are prefaced by a factual statement:
things that exist are in opposition, and each one tries to annihilate the
other. Each being possesses means to preserve itself, to repel that which is
the opposite of it, to annihilate it and to assimilate it, and finally, to over-
come other things to make them serve its own purposes. Each being is
equipped with weapons that enable it to conquer its enemies. One is there-
fore tempted to imagine that the individual’s search for well-being was na-
ture’s intention; the existence in the individual of an instinct for survival,
of defensive and nutritive organs, finally, of technical abilities enabling him
to transform his environment, seems to indicate this. But there is more:
Farabi states that some animals, which he does not, however, name, some-
times attack other animals and kill them, without deriving any obvious
advantage from that. Everything occurs, thus, not only as if every living
being saw itself as the supreme goal of nature, but even as if it believed that
only its own existence were legitimate, and that the raw existence of any-
thing else was harmful to it.
In addition, every being attempts to dominate others. This is a sponta-
neous instinct independent of will. This situation of rivalry exists between
one animal species and another, but also, within most species, between one
individual and another: mutual attacks and aggression do not cease, each
being seeking either to destroy the other if it is harmful, or to use it for its
own ends if it can be of use. Observation backs this up: everything hap-
 The Medieval Model
pens without order, hierarchies are shaken, what happens to people does
not depend on their merits. We can leave the responsibility for this gloomy
diagnosis to Farabi’s adversaries. We can argue against some details of it,
such as the existence in the animal of a purposeless aggressiveness, or of a
struggle to the death between individuals of the same species of animal.
The main point is the dual conclusion that, according to Farabi, his ad-
versaries draw from it. It is first of all a generalization attributing that state
of reality to nature: “Some say, following that, that this situation is natu-
ral for beings and is their innate character.” It is then, and above all, “that
[things] that natural bodies do out of their nature are those that it is ap-
propriate (yanbaġı̄) for animals capable of choice to do through their choices
and their [actions of ] will, and for those that are capable of reflecting to
do through their reflection.”
This Hobbesian description of a war of all against all may have ancient
sources. Plato comes to mind immediately, as do the theories defended by
the characters of Thrasymachus and, above all, of Callicles, the latter men-
tioning, fleetingly, moreover, the example of the animals.38 On the other
hand, I know of no precedent for the very movement of Farabi’s reason-
ing. And what is above all unique and perhaps new is the succinct way in
which the equation between “is” and “should” is proposed: what irrational
animals do without wishing to is what reasonable animals should do, with
full awareness and deliberate intent. Farabi does not approve of this equa-
tion; or, in any case, he does not approve of the terms of the comparison.
For him, as we shall see, there is indeed an exemplary reality whose effec-
tive behavior should serve as a rule for us. But the good model to follow is
not the animal, nor any other sublunary thing; it is the order of the sky.39
A N A P P E A L
One essential fact remains: one can appeal against evil to a higher jurisdic-
tion. In this cosmology, human activity occurs only in a lost corner of the
world. It is only in this tiny hole in the cosmic order that one can and must
distinguish between good and evil and, let us hope, choose the good. Ev-
erywhere else the choice in favor of the good has been made since the
very beginning. And that “being” is identified with the good. Well before
Scholasticism raised the formula to the rank of axiom, the Being and the
Good were interchangeable (ens et bonum convertuntur).40
It is possible that acknowledging this fact might help us to understand
why the Ancients hardly ever formulated a distinction between “is” and
“ought.” Granted, all morality practices this implicitly, and the Stoics have
An Ethical Cosmos 
a concept of the deon that corresponds more or less to the “ought.” But its
formulation as a contrast between two principles underwent a long period
of incubation from which it emerged only in the modern era.41 To my
knowledge it budded for the first time implicitly in Machiavelli, in the fa-
mous text in which he speaks of the great distancing (discosto) between
“what is done” and “what should be done.”42 In Hume it is proposed as a
principle.43 But according to the ancient and medieval vision of the world,
every “ought” (Sollen) is surrounded by a gigantic “is” (Sein) which renders
it relative, indeed negligible.
Furthermore, that which does not yet coincide perfectly with the good
is en route toward it. From this point of view, what would correspond to
our “ought” is only temporary and tends toward its reabsorption into the
“is.” The “ought” is the expectantly suffering “is” which would indeed suf-
fer from not yet truly being itself if its potential being were not a way of
forcing itself to reach its potential. The world is animated on every level
by a movement of ascent: at the bottom, as already seen in Aristotle, mat-
ter desires a form.44 Medieval thinkers continued what was scarcely more
than an image: every form tends toward a more perfect form.45 Meister
Eckhart puts it very well: “The nature of every seed aims to become wheat,
the nature of all metal aims to become gold, every birth (geberunge) aims
to become a man.”46 Man’s imitation of higher realities is thus placed into
a more extensive movement of which it is in the end only one particular
case. It is how an intelligent and free being accomplishes what all located
below him on the scale of being does without knowing or choosing it.
Thus, up until a specific period in the history of the human mind, na-
ture was one of the sources of morality. By this I do not mean the attempts
to base morality on “human nature.” For in that case “nature” above all
means “essence,” as it is grasped and elucidated by an ontology of the hu-
man, in other words, by a philosophical anthropology. The nature of man
is then that which man is deep down, that which constitutes his most com-
plete form. And it is a matter of concretely realizing the perfection of man’s
humanitythrough a praxis that makes the unfolding of that essence pos-
sible—indeed, that demands it.47
Quite the opposite is true in the world view I am attempting to recon-
struct here. The nature that determines ethics is indeed that which is usu-
ally understood by “nature,” that is, all the things that man neither makes
(through his poiēsis), nor does (through his praxis), but which are there in
themselves. This nature is subsequently the object of a purely passive re-
lationship, one that occurs when an object is given for observation. But for
 The Medieval Model
us, today, nature understood in this way has no relationship to ethics. Or
if it has one, it is at best in the capacity of one realm of application among
others. It even comes after the primary realm of moral actions, which
is, of course, interhuman relationships. For our ancestors, however, man
could—in fact should—borrow the criterion of his action from nature.
Nature was then a source of morality.
As a consequence one could turn physics into a propaedeutic to ethics.
The Stoics, the first to clearly formulate the division of philosophy into
various realms, were also the first to connect them to each other. In this
case, as regards the objective order (as distinguished from the order of
learning), ethics is always to physics what the fruit is to the tree.48 Chrysip-
pus even stresses that “there is no other means, or more appropriate means,
to reach a definition of good and bad things, of virtue and happiness, than
by starting from common nature and from the government (dioikēsis) of
the world.”49
It is indeed nature, and not physical science alone, that determines
man’s humanity; nature as an object of study, not the study of nature as the
activity of a subject. The ethical value of physics does not come from the
human process of learning, but from nature itself. It is not a matter of re-
calling what is obvious: a study of nature can lead us to the practice of cer-
tain virtues, because it awakens them or because it implies them. Thus the
effort to bring to light the mysteries of nature can train us to be coura-
geous; the reflection on the marvelous order of things can lead us to ad-
miration and gratitude toward the Creator—whether that creator be a
personal god or the unconscious soul of the world; to consider the small
amount of space that we occupy in the world can teach us humility, etc. All
these elements have been illustrated throughout the history of thought by
the most diverse authors: by Pascal, but also by Spinoza, Goethe, and oth-
ers. And physicists today often repeat this hymn to the educative value of
physics.
We find these ideas in ancient texts. But we also find passages in which
it is clearly a question of nature as an object of study, not of its study as an
activity. Thus, for Cicero: “The study of the heavenly phenomena bestows
a power of self-control that arises from the perception of the consummate
restraint and order that obtain even among the gods; also loftiness of mind
is inspired by contemplating the creations and actions of the gods, and jus-
tice by realizing the will, design and purpose of the Supreme Lord and
Ruler to whose nature we are told by philosophers that the True Reason
and Supreme Law are conformed.”50
An Ethical Cosmos 
E T H I C S I N T H E CO S M O L O G I C A L
A text by Simplicius seems especially relevant here. It appears in the pro-
logue to his famous commentary on Aristotle’s Physics. It was written at the
beginning of the sixth century, but it is highly likely that it borrows from
a much earlier commentary, that of Alexander of Aphrodisias (second–
third century). Simplicius cites him very often elsewhere and probably
takes material from his commentary, without naming him. As for the pas-
sage we are going to look at, it has a parallel in the “great commentary”
(tafsı̄r) of Averroes on the same work, a parallel that is presented as a quo-
tation by Alexander. What I will say about Simplicius’s text will therefore
apply also, at least in part, to Alexander.
Following a procedure that was commonly practiced by ancient com-
mentators, Simplicius precedes his explanation of the words of Aristotle
with an introduction in which he responds to several previous, canonical
questions: What is the work’s intent? What is the name of its author?
Where should the work be placed in the body of the writings of the au-
thor? etc. Now, one of these questions concerns the usefulness of the work
and, thus, that of the knowledge it claims to impart. It is within this
framework that Simplicius wonders about the extent to which a study of
nature is useful. To do this he distinguishes five successive points, which
he places in order of increasing importance.51 Physics (phusiologia) is use-
ful: in the affairs of daily life, because it provides the principles of tech-
nologies such as medicine and mechanics (understood above all as the art
of manufacturing machines of war); because it contributes to leading the
superior part of the soul, which is the intellect, toward its perfection—for
which a study of theology is particularly valuable; it is an auxiliary for
moral virtues; a ladder that leads toward knowledge of God and ideas; and
finally, it incites us to piety and to acts of thanksgiving toward God. The
advantages of the study of nature are thus classed in ascending order. The
more important they are, the later they are mentioned. From this perspec-
tive it is interesting that physics’ contribution to technical matters is
placed in first place and is dealt with only very concisely. What we other
moderns would insist on the most, that is, the conquests of medicine and
mechanics, is of course mentioned clearly. But the relevant passage is ex-
tremely brief. In it there is only a taste of what is essential, which is yet to
come. Simplicius stresses explicitly that the fourth advantage, ascension to
God, is the most decisive, which reduces the fifth (religious feeling) to the
status of an appendix. On the other hand, a qualification is necessary if one
pays attention to the more or less important place reserved for the various
 The Medieval Model
arguments. The passage devoted to the third of these includes no fewer
than twenty-five lines, that is, more than the other four put together, which
add up to only seventeen lines (respectively, four, three, seven, and five). In
addition, this part is divided carefully: one paragraph for each cardinal
virtue. This is why I will take a closer look at it.
Consideration of nature teaches temperance, for two reasons: it exposes
the nature of pleasure and shows that it is only a consequence, a sort of epi-
phenomenon (parakolouthēma), and never an end in itself; what is violent
about it comes from what is against nature. One would therefore not be
tempted to place pleasure at the highest level of one’s choices (proēgoumenon);
next, to be concerned with physics (phusikē theōria) deflects from the en-
joyments of the body and consequently from passion for external things.
This second argument also holds for justice, moderation, and generosity
in negotiations and contracts. In addition, physics teaches courage, by
showing how tiny our body appears compared to the whole of things that
exist, how short our lives are, and how necessary is the dissolution of our
being. Knowledge of the superiority of the soul over the body helps to
approach death with serenity: “Who would be more courageous than the
one who has recognized, thanks to physics (phusiologia), that the living be-
ing that we are is not a perceptible part of the universe, any more than the
measure of our life in the totality of time, that it is necessary that all that
is born be followed by corruption (phthora), which is decomposition into
simple [components], restoration of the parts into the totalities to which
they belong (oikeiai holotētes), rejuvenation of [phenomena] that had grown
old, and return in strength of tired (kekmēkos) [phenomena]? To be cor-
rupted now or aftera few years would be negligible for him who recognizes
the infinitude of time. And if, understanding (ennoein) the distinctive su-
periority (khōristē huperokhē) of the soul, he compares it to the troubles
(askholia) that come to him from the body, then he will easily accept death.
And he who has such as attitude toward death, what else among what passes
as terrible could frighten him?” Physics also teaches wisdom (phronēsis),
because the conscious part of the soul, out of which comes knowledge of
nature, is related to it. We can note a shift here: in good Aristotelianism,
wisdom (phronēsis) is a dianoetic virtue, not an ethical one. It is wisdom
that provides ethical virtues with the logos that enables them to attain a
happy medium. Simplicius, using the more or less clear image of kinship
or affinity (suggenes), conceals the difference between sophia and phronēsis,
which Aristotle, for whom that difference holds a central place, asserted
strongly. Physics “renders [those who study it] magnanimous and proud
(megalophrōn), by convincing them not to consider any human [concerns]
An Ethical Cosmos 
great. It sees to it that they are content with little and, as a consequence,
they are ready to put in common what they have and need nothing from
others, [and thus] it renders them generous (eleutherios).” The argument is
interesting, because one might expect that it would invite us less toward
magnanimity and more to humility. It seems that the wise man no longer
considers himself as belonging to humanity. He feels from the start above
everything that is human.
The virtue of justice is placed in fifth place. Simplicius risks a bold for-
mula with regard to that virtue, which seems to me to be of the greatest
importance here. The study of nature contributes “to justice, insofar as it
shows that the elements and the parts of the Whole (to pan) make way for
each other, are content with (agapān) their place (taxis), respect geometri-
cal equality and, by that fact, stand apart from greed (pleonexia).”52 Con-
templation of nature inspires justice because nature conducts itself with
justice. The text does not point out completely clearly the realm in which
this justice is most specifically manifest. It might in fact be a matter of the
four elements that change within each other, in the spirit of the fragment
of Anaximander;53 or of the concentric arrangement of the parts of the
kosmos, none of which encroaches upon its neighbor; or of the order of as-
tronomical phenomena, etc. Similarly, Farabi sees a perfect cycle among
the elements: since matter cannot achieve the same forms at the same
time, each renders its place to the other, taking turns.54 However this jus-
tice may be concretely achieved, the “geometric equality,” a phrase bor-
rowed from a well-known passage by Plato, cited above,55 is in things them-
selves. Nature itself practices virtues.
Averroes presents the same list of virtues, successively naming courage,
temperance, justice, generosity, and magnanimity.56 He adds, as regards
what concerns us here, an essential element that he formulates quite
clearly and again might be derived from the lost commentary of Alexan-
der of Aphrodisias: the moral model is found in things themselves. Concern-
ing the virtue of justice, he thus writes that wise men seek it: “For they
know that the nature of justice resides in the substance of things (Latin:
naturam justitiae existentem in substantia rerum; Hebrew: tebha‘ hay-yōšer
han-nims�a’ be-‘es�em han-nims� ā’ōt), this is why they wish to imitate that na-
ture and acquire that form.”57
The idea is not rare. Well before Averroes, and on Christian land,
Bernard of Chartres (d. ) said that the subject of Plato’s Timaeus was
natural justice (naturalis justitia): “Since Plato wanted to deal in depth
with natural justice, he began with the generation of the perceptible world.
In its creation and the just ordering of its parts, in the distinction between
 The Medieval Model
celestial and non-celestial things, he taught the strength of natural justice
which the Creator used toward the created, he who, through pure charity,
granted each thing that which naturally related to it.”58 Bernard adopts the
classical definition of distributive justice. But whereas it normally occurs
between creatures, he places it in the relationships between the Creator
and his creatures. Justice is indeed present in things themselves, but it is
the result of the agreement of each with its own nature, as it is instilled by
God. The Platonists linked to the Chartres school adopted this idea. But
they were not the exception: all medieval scholars—both the common
man who received the idea through tradition and philosophers—were in
agreement that “by [means of ] right (yōšer) the Heavens and the Earth en-
dure.”59 And the idea did not disappear in the modern era, since it is ex-
plicitly encountered in Schiller and Herder.60
Within this context can be placed an entire complex of ideas that con-
stitute a fundamental feature of the medieval vision of the world, that is,
what is called symbolism. Much has already been written on the subject,
and in various styles, both by drawing up lists of correspondences and by
studying the mindset that underlies it.61 The basic idea is that the world is
linked to man through the presence in both of the same system of signifi-
cation. The world is full of meaning, and of a meaning that man is capable
of deciphering and applying to himself. Wisdom would be a wisdom of
the world in that it would consist of correctly interpreting the messages
contained in things. For Christians, such messages bear above all on God,
who left his mark on the created and filters through creation. But through
the world, God also presents us with models of how we should behave. We
have just recalled that moral virtues are present in things. One can thus see
them in those things, with more or less clarity depending on their level of
being. Thus the celestial world clearly shows us the four cardinal virtues.62
. . .
According to this view there are not, on the one hand, a physical world de-
void of “values” and, on the other, “values” without roots in perceptible re-
ality. The very trite notion of “values” is perhaps itself the result of a sep-
aration that ancient and medieval cosmology renders impossible. To speak
of “values” indeed causes good and evil to depend on subjectivity: what
“matters,” what is “valuable,” is what one esteems, what “has a price,” is
what one prizes, what one appreciates. The principle that sets forth values
must therefore be worth more than the values it sets down, which are by
that fact always revocable: “Among all the things we value, it is the evalua-
tion (Schätzen) itself that is the valuable (Schatz) and the jewel.”63 “Values”
An Ethical Cosmos 
are therefore stricken with an intrinsic weakness, since posing them as such
is to recognize at the same time that they cannot subsist by themselves.
There is nothing surprising, therefore, in our speaking so much of “de-
fending values”: they are too weak to do so themselves, much less to de-
fend us, we who set them forth.
This difficulty could not present itself in ancient and medieval think-
ing. For that thinking, the being is good at the outset and therefore has no
need to receive that quality elsewhere than from itself. The interconvert-
ibility of the Being and the Good not only governs metaphysics, in the
doctrine of transcendentals; it has a cosmological version. It allows itself
to be seen in the very structure of the world. This situation has ethical con-
sequences: it asks for nothing less than a specific way to define human
moral action. Good is not something that must be injected from outside
into a neutral receptacle; it is already there, indeed, it imposes itself with
brio into reality. This does not lead to any form of quietism. Ethics remain
a task. But “to do” good consists less of producing than of reproducing, than
of transporting from onedomain to another that which is already there.
 The Medieval Model
Chapter 
A Cosmological Ethics
Numquid nosti ordinem caeli
Et pones rationem eius in terra?
Job : Vulg.
The world, and above all that which is most cosmic in the world—the
sky—provided ancient and medieval man with brilliant evidence that
good is not only a possibility, but a triumphant reality. Cosmology has an
ethical dimension. In turn, the task of transporting such good into the
here below where we live enriches ethics with a cosmological dimension.
It is through the mediation of the world that man becomes what he must
be, and consequently, what he is. Wisdom thus defined is indeed a “wis-
dom of the world.”
The mediation exercised by the world and the wisdom that it enables
are however theoretical before they are practical, or first theoretical in or-
der to become practical—assuming that this separation of the theoretical
and the practical allows us to adequately grasp what is at issue here.
T H E WO R L D A S O B J E C T O F CO N T EM P LAT I O N
Contemplation is the form taken, in certain cases, by the universal aspira-
tion to attain the good located above us. Contemplation is therefore a re-
ality more immense than man, and in a sense all things, even the inani-
mate, wish to contemplate.1 Nevertheless, man is the only creature in
whom contemplation becomes a precursor to ethical action. In the Pro-
trepticus Aristotle resolved the already classic dispute regarding the three
types of life in favor of the contemplative life. He also gave classic form to
the idea of contemplation (theōria), but not without leaving his doctrine
on this issue strangely incomplete. Indeed he does not immediately an-
swer the question of whether the object of contemplation is the world
(kosmos) or something else.2 We learn at the end of his principal treatise on
ethics that contemplation constitutes the most elevated and most worthy
mode of life. But he never really tells us what we are to contemplate, what
is the object of contemplation. Other passages in his work indicate a nu-
anced response. The highest being, the god, contemplates nothing but him-
self. But he cannot serve as an example in this regard. Examining humble
beings such as the animals compensates through the ease of the research
for the dignity they lack as compared to the celestial bodies, so that the
charm of biology is equal to that of astronomy.3 One passage suggests
that philosophy is service to and contemplation of the god. But is it the
god of the Metaphysics? Mightn’t Aristotle rather be thinking of the in-
ner god, human intellect?4
Later thinkers, in particular those of the Stoic tradition, have a ready
response: the supreme object of contemplation is the world as indistin-
guishable from God. The dignity of contemplation and the dignity of the
world are mutually reinforced: it is because contemplation is the loftiest ac-
tivity that it has bearing on the world; reciprocally, it is the supreme dignity
of the world that endows contemplation with all its worth.5 The goal of
human existence is to be a kosmotheōros (the word is not ancient, and was no
doubt coined by Huygens).6 This response was anticipated, moreover, even
before Aristotle by thinkers like Anaxagoras, to whom are ascribed sug-
gestions that the goal of human life is the contemplation of the sky.7 The
model he presents is cited throughout the Middle Ages: it is found in Chal-
cidius,8 from whom it passed on to the thinkers of the Chartres school and
elsewhere. Thus, Bernard of Tours attributes it to Empedocles and adds a
striking formula: “Take away the firmament, I will be nothing (celum sub-
trahe, nullus ero).”9 The idea is found, moreover, not only among the Chris-
tians, but is also present in Jewish tradition beginning with the Talmud.10
To believe that the world is an object of contemplation is all the easier
in that the world is endowed with divine traits. Aristotle already considered
the celestial bodies to be divine.11 The Stoics rendered the entire world di-
vine, by identifying it with Jupiter. Pliny the Elder writes: “[The world] is
sacred, eternal, huge, all of it, or rather it is itself everything, outside, in-
side, containing all things in it, it is at the same time the work of the nature
of things and the very nature of things.”12 There is the pseudo-Aristotelian,
somewhat Stoic, treatise, De mundo [On the world], which, perhaps for
the first time, assigns contemplation its own object: knowledge of the world
and knowledge of what is most excellent in it—that is the supreme busi-
ness of philosophy.13
The comic author Menander (–) corrects a traditional pessimistic
 The Medieval Model
declaration. According to that declaration the greatest good, after that of
never having been born, is to die as quickly as possible: “The man who I
declare has had the best fortune is he who has quickly gone back to where
he came from, but not without having contemplated without difficulty
(alupōs) those venerable beings: the sun, common [to all], the stars, water,
clouds, fire. These beings, even if he lives for a hundred years, are always
visible; and if he lives only for a few years, he will never see anything more
venerable.”14 Contemplation of the world is the greatest thing life can offer.
It justifies life, but also neutralizes any consideration of duration. However
short life may be, it will at least allow one to grasp the immutable order of
the sky, the eternity of which is seen as easily in the short as in the long term.
In Cicero’s Lucullus, the eponymous character gives an oration inspired
by Antiochus of Ascalon against the skepticism of the New Academy. Ci-
cero replies. He stresses that the Stoics themselves are in disagreement on
certain points in physics, in particular on the relative importance of the
sun and the ether. He adds: “I do not think, however, that one must dis-
card these questions . . . that come from physicists. Indeed, the consider-
ation and contemplation of nature are like a sort of fodder for minds and
intelligences; we stand up, we seem to become taller, we look from above
upon human things and, by dint of reflecting on superior and celestial
[things], we scorn those things that are of us, as being narrow and tiny.
The very fact of hunting down things that are both the greatest and the
best hidden already includes charm, and if, moreover, something appears
that has the appearance of truth, the mind is filled with a typically human
pleasure (humanissima voluptas).”15
The dignity of contemplation is a principle admitted by all philoso-
phers, transcending different schools of thought. It persists even if the ex-
pected degree of certainty varies, from Stoic confidence to skeptical reser-
vations that are content with likelihood. The approach of the investigation
takes precedence over the results obtained, as if Cicero were anticipating
specifically modern attitudes here.16 Contemplation is not distinguished
from consideration, if one can apply the distinction, which was transmit-
ted through later sources, between the possession of truth and the seeking
of it.17 Both nourish the soul, not only, as was the case with Plato, their ob-
ject: divine truth.18
With more restraint, Alexander of Aphrodisias confirms the choice in
favor of the world as object of philosophical contemplation.19 He distin-
guishes two types of knowledge worthy of interest (spoudēē): one which is
so only indirectly, because it relates to other knowledge that is worthy
of being chosen for itself; and the other which is so directly because it
A Cosmological Ethics 
includes in itself that which is worthy of interest. Philosophy does not
consist of knowing just anything, and there are even things it is better not
to know: “Knowledge of these things being completely superfluous, it no
doubt does not belong to philosophy, since it is a way of giving oneself
trouble in vain.” Just as the philosopher does not act haphazardly, nor does
he consider justcivilizations did not have the same image of the sky. For the Egyp-
tians, it was a dais supported by four pillars; for the Mesopotamians, it was
more of a cable that held a layered universe together.3 This vision of the
whole is not always presented in an explicit way; most of the time it re-
mains in the background, which brings up an important fact: on this point
the earliest civilizations are in stark contrast with the Middle Ages, when,
as we shall see, summaries of cosmology were in large supply.4
As regards cosmogony, there are some distinctions to be made: we are
unaware of any Egyptian text that might contain a tale of the entire gen-
esis of the world in a unified version.5 Nor did Mesopotamia exhibit very
much direct interest in cosmogony; Mesopotamian storytellers speak of it
primarily by way of genealogies of the gods.6 There is in fact a tale of the
emergence of the whole, the Enuma elish.7 But we only have a relatively
later version, in Akkadian, dating from around  ... But it is not out
of the question that this text gives credit to a more recent god, a parvenu,
Marduk, for the creative feats that up until then had been attributed to a
more ancient god, Enlil.8 The cosmographic and the cosmogonic elements
are so intertwined, consequently presenting the structure of the world in
narrative form, that we often describe this view of the world as mythical.
What is of interest to me here is knowing whether such views of the
world imply a cosmology, in the sense in which I use the term. Granted,
even if, as in Egypt, those views do not always give special importance to
the birth of man,9 they implicitly give humans a place in the universe. Sit-
uating man is even perhaps their central function, if not their only one.
Man is “on the earth,” “under the sky,” and above the subterranean regions.
It is this that distinguishes him from the gods who are “in heaven.”10 Cos-
mographic facts can serve as metaphors for traits relating to anthropology;
thus, one can compare the distance between heaven and earth with that
which separates the limited intelligence of humans from unfathomable
divine thoughts: “The plans of God [are] as [far from us] as the highest
reaches of heaven.”11 Humans are disproportionate to the physical uni-
verse: “The tallest man cannot reach the heavens; the largest man cannot
cover the earth.”12
But we must make a distinction here: to situate human beings in rela-
tion to the physical universe is one thing; it is something else entirely to
seek to account for the humanity of man out of considerations related to
 Setting the Stage
the structure of the universe. In the first case man is considered as a basic
given, for which no accounting is needed. In the second case, one can raise
the question of exactly what a human being is, and what he should be. So
when it is necessary to explain why humans walk on two legs, why they
have genders, why they must labor, why they must die, other tales take
over, tales that no longer take the entire universe under consideration, but
which concentrate exclusively on man. The best example of this is most
certainly the simple juxtaposition of the two tales of creation at the begin-
ning of the book of Genesis.
A M I S S I N G WO RD
The first condition required for speaking of a “cosmology,” that is, a re-
flexive relationship with the world, is that the idea of “world” has become
a theme. The sign of such “thematization” is the presence in the vocabu-
lary of a word for “world.” The word “world,” or rather the series of terms
that may be translated by “world,” appeared at a relatively late period. If,
as tradition would have it, we date the end of prehistory and the begin-
ning of history as it is commonly known with the invention of writing, or
around  ..., we can say that it was only at the halfway point of his-
tory that there appeared a word capable of designating all of reality in a
unified way. Humanity was able to do without the idea of “world” for half
of its history—not to mention the immensity of prehistory. The discov-
ery of the idea of “world” coincides more or less then with what Karl
Jaspers has called the “Axial Age” (Achsenzeit).13
The great river valley civilizations, which invented or developed writ-
ing, of course had names for the earth, not as a planet, of course, but as an
inhabited domain, as oikoumenē, a common dwelling-place for men and
animals; in this sense it contrasted with the inaccessible dwelling-place of
the gods—heaven. But these civilizations do not seem to have had a word
capable of designating the world in its entirety, uniting its two compo-
nents. In Chinese the modern word shì jiè (in Japanese se kai) is formed
from jiè, “circle,” and shì; the second word also signifies “generation, dura-
tion of life,” which makes it close to the Greek word aiōn. In India the San-
skrit lokā, “visible space” (as in the English look) can indeed be translated
as “world,” but in such a way that it is the expression lokadvaya, “the two
worlds” (heaven and earth) that we must ultimately see as corresponding
to our “the world.”14 In Hebrew, the medieval and modern word for “world”
is ‘ōlām. Its root is Semitic, the same as the Arabic word ‘ālam—which it-
self came from Aramaic. The word is indeed found in the Bible; but there,
Prehistory: A Pre-Cosmic Wisdom 
it has only the sense of “unlimited time, eternity,” and not yet that of
“world,” which it would only assume in the Talmudic period through the
intermediary of the meaning of “era” (here, too, see the Greek word aiōn).15
For there to have been a word meaning “world,” the idea that it ex-
presses would have had to have reached human consciousness. And this
assumes that people envisioned a concept in its totality, a category grasped
in its two moments, that is, as a synthesis of the first two categories of
quantity, plurality and unity. It is necessary, therefore, on the one hand,
that the parts that make up the whole be dealt with exhaustively, without
anything being excluded, and, on the other hand, that such totality be
considered unified. Since we are dealing with a physical totality, its unity
would consist of being ordered, well ranked, etc.
The earliest civilizations certainly did not formulate the concept of the
totality of things in this way. The ancient Egyptians did not have a word
for “world,”16 any more than did the languages of Mesopotamia. But nei-
ther civilization could help but approach the concept in certain contexts,
as when it was necessary to name that which resulted from the process of
“creation,” and they resorted to two procedures. Each resorted moreover
to one of the two features of the category that have just been mentioned.
a) In the case where it was a matter of considering the whole, the solu-
tion most of the time was listing the components that it included. The list
could be more or less exhaustive and drawn up following a classificatory
principle that is more or less clear. They spoke of stars in this way, of plants,
animals, etc. Or they would apply alternating oppositions following hori-
zontal and vertical axes: terra firma/sea; heaven/nether world. It is possible
in the long run that the multitude of the parts of the world were brought
into a basic binary opposition. Thus when the Bible speaks of creation and
names the result of the creative work, it names, as we all know, “the heaven
and the earth.”17 This formula is very old, to the point that it is perhaps the
first ever used to designate the world. It is found in Egypt in the “Instruc-
tion for Merikare,” a text in a manuscript from the XVIIIth Dynasty (end
of the fifteenth century ...), but whose content no doubt goes back to
the end of the twentieth century.18 The same is true of texts inscribed on
sarcophagi.19 In Mesopotamia it is found in Sumerian (-) as well as in
Akkadian (šamû u ers�etum).20 It exists in Sanskrit (dyāvā-kshāmā, -prithivı̄
or -bhūmi, or the dual rodas) and it is also frequent among the Greeks, andanything, and “contemplation must have a limit, just as ac-
tion has one.” Philosophy therefore desires to know only divine and hon-
orable things. And those things are the ones of which nature is the crafts-
man, nature which is divine art. Alexander repeats a play on words that was
already hoary in his own time on the verb “to contemplate” (theōrein). It is
supposed to show that the objects of contemplation are divine things, that
contemplation “sees divine things” (horân ta theia). Consequently, theo-
retical philosophy is the science of divine things and of things that are nat-
urally born and constituted. It is knowing those things that is in itself wor-
thy of interest. Alexander expresses himself vaguely, but it seems that he is
taking astronomy to be the paradigmatic science. He says in fact that it is
the only part of geometry that envisions divine and natural substances.
Astronomy has the advantage of best concretizing the theoretical model
of man’s relationship to that which exists.
A T EXT B Y S EN E CA
But it is without doubt Seneca who voices the idea most clearly. He did so
around  .., in the treatise De otio, whose title is best translated as “On
Availability.”20 Seneca begins by repeating the ancient question, disputed
at least since the time of Euripides, regarding the preeminence of the ac-
tive life or the contemplative life. He neutralizes the issue by connecting
both options to different versions of the same basic attitude: to be con-
cerned with the objects of contemplation is to be actively involved in the
highest form of politics. The response he thus proposes is not found in his
writings alone. It is also shared by Plotinus: contemplation is the highest
form of action.21 And for an Ancient, “action” (praxis) designates above all
political life, the affairs of the polis. The assimilation of contemplation
with action is therefore rendered possible by assimilating the universe to a
polis, “cosmopolitanism” in the strict sense, as it is supported by the Sto-
ics. “Idleness,” the effort to free oneself for contemplation, is in this way
also a way of serving the polis.
Seneca lists an entire program of ethical and physical investigation. To
contemplate is thus not simply to passively amass observations of the spec-
tacle of things, but to open up an inquiry into a reality that is not imme-
 The Medieval Model
diately apparent. The final goal, then, is for the work of God not to remain
without a witness. To live according to nature was the old Stoic ideal and
remains so here in a new form: the formula henceforth designates the ful-
fillment of a mission assigned by nature. This is a dual mission: to act and
to contemplate: “I live according to nature if I give myself to it entirely, if
I devote my life to admiring and adoring it. And nature wants me to do
two things: to act and to devote myself to contemplation; I do both these
things, since even contemplation cannot be conceived without action.”
The desire to know hidden things proves that we are naturally drawn
toward contemplation. The desire to know in the realms of geography,
theater, history, ethnography—and even voyeurism—shows this. The
natural desire to know, upon which Aristotle already based his thinking,
but which he left at the theoretical level, is connected here to its concrete
source. Aristotle also took into evidence our taste for traveling.22 This im-
pulse was finally given a name, which remained classic:23 curiosity: “Cu-
riosity in us is a gift of nature.” Except that the word “curiosity” did not yet
mean for Seneca what it means today. It suggests a very important con-
cept, cura, the restless attention given to a thing, the concern that one has
for it. The totality of things, considered to be beautiful, well organized,
thus of kosmos, must have a spectator: “Being aware of its genius and its
beauty, [nature] created us to be the spectators of such a marvelous spec-
tacle; it would have wasted its effort, if these so great works, so pure, so
finely conforming, so brilliant, rich with so much varied beauty, were of-
fered only to the void.”
The spectator nature requires is man. Man’s physical characteristics—
erect posture, a flexible neck—and foremost his central location are con-
nected to his role as spectator. Seneca mentions a theme that became com-
monplace:24 “What proves that nature wants us to contemplate it, and
not simply to glance at it, is the place where it has put us: nature has estab-
lished us in its center, arranging around us the panorama of the world; and
nature did not stop at placing man upright, but, since it wanted to make
contemplation easy for him, so he could follow the movement of the stars
from their rising to their setting and turn his face to follow the movement
of the Universe, nature placed man’s head toward the sky and placed it on
a flexible neck.” Man’s central location is therefore not an advantage that
he can attribute to himself. He fulfills here, in the theater of nature, not
the function of the hero, but that, less glorious, of the claque.25 Similarly,
diurnal movement is assumed to enable nature to successively present the
totality of its riches for human observation: “Then, by making the signs of
the zodiac progress, [nature] has successively deployed to his eyes all the
A Cosmological Ethics 
parts of itself.” Seneca derives a curious consequence from this: nature
manifests itself to man “so that what it shows him of it inspires him to
want to know the rest.” The fact that nature shows itself entirely serves
only to heighten the desire to know hidden things. The formula is awk-
ward, however: one might wonder what the “other things” are if what is
shown is already “all things.”
We do not see everything; nor do we see all things according to their
exact dimensions. Sight only functions as a scout, it only opens the path
that leads beyond the world: “There are in fact objects that our sight does
not reach and those that we see appear shortened to us: it is indeed our eye,
however, that opens the path of investigation to us and which poses the
first givens of our knowledge of the true. We can then, through induction,
pass from the perceptible to the obscure and conceive a reality more an-
cient than the firmament itself.” Once again, Seneca lists questions relat-
ing to physics. The questions are ranked from high to low, from the stars
to men, in such a way that the final questions reproduce as in a mirror,
on a smaller scale, the progress of the entire passage. All the questions
concern the genesis of the world rather than its structure, its cosmogony
rather than its cosmography. The yon . . . is rather the hither. . . ! By thus
transcending the perceptible, “our thought goes through the ramparts of
the sky and is not content to know what falls under the senses: ‘I delve,’ it
says, ‘into the expanse that opens beyond the firmament.’” The image is
ancient and not specifically Stoic. On the contrary, it has a classic form in
the Epicurean Lucretius.26 What is original, however, is the idea of knowl-
edge that appears here: knowledge is not conquered by human effort over
a nature that would only offer itself passively as an object; it is part of a
strategy of nature itself that desires to accede, through man, to something
resembling self-awareness.
T H E P RI M AC Y O F T H E S KY
The study of nature is thus above all the study of the celestial world.27 This
settles an old quarrel. Aristotle had hesitated between two possible objects
for philosophical contemplation, each compensating for what is lacking in
the other: divine realities are, in themselves, more valuable, but they most
often escape us; but things of this world, however mundane they may be,
are easily accessible.28 While Aristotle, enthralled with biology and less in-
terested in astronomy, makes it clear that he leaned toward the former, the
balance is subsequently upset in favor of astronomy. This is, for example,
the case in Gersonides, himself an astronomer by profession:“Because of
 The Medieval Model
the high rank of this investigation, the small degree of understanding that
we reached in it is more precious and more noble to us than the entire in-
vestigation of matters less noble and of lesser rank, and this is quite clear
from the nature of human desires.”29
But already Proclus, for purely theoretical reasons, gave precedence to
astronomy, knowledge of divine bodies, over alchemy, the study of the
transmutations of earthly elements: “On the subject of the stars, an inves-
tigation of them has a justification (prophasis), their discovery has a legit-
imacy (katorthōsis) which is not small, [that is:] so that they demonstrate
that the bodies that are transported in a circle move in a uniform way. They
say in fact that it is what is appropriate for divine bodies.”30 It is particu-
larly interesting here that in order to claim the dignity that it has by na-
ture, astronomy requires a comparison with alchemy that to our knowl-
edge never appears before Proclus. Alchemy is not just a knowledge of the
terrestrial. In that case it would have been enough to contrast astronomy
to geography or to zoology. Alchemy is also a claim to intervene in the
course of nature, to lead nature to a perfection of which it would be in-
capable by itself. Alchemy is the first instance of a technological approach
to the modification of nature31—an approach that, as is known, often ap-
peared in the modern era, above all in Francis Bacon, under the guise of
magic. Alchemy is thus the ultimate non-contemplative science, and dou-
bly so, through its object of study and also through its methods. It there-
fore contrasts with astronomy, the nature of whose object prevents one
from acting upon it, so that it is purely contemplative.
Astronomy also legitimizes its existence by arguing its moral useful-
ness. First, by asserting that contemplation brings happiness: without the
contemplation of the ocean of beings made possible by geometry, there is
no happiness, recalls Maximus of Tyre.32 But on the other hand, the idea
of an imitation of the sky, which came from the Timaeus, is again found
here. Thus the idea that we encountered above among the philosophers—
Simplicius and, no doubt, as his source, Alexander of Aphrodisias before
him—is applied to the only rigorously mathematical discipline of the pre-
Galilean period.33 It is interesting that it is practitioners of science who
thus endorse the idea of the commentators. Would this be a transgression
of the Platonic distinction between empirical astronomy and rational as-
tronomy?34 Not really, since, on the one hand, the contemplation in ques-
tion is intellectual, not tangible; and on the other, astronomy is purely hy-
pothetical, it does not “dirty its hands” with physics.
Ptolemy writes in the preface to the Almagest: “In addition, as to the ex-
cellence (kalokagathia) that concerns actions and character, it is [astronomy]
A Cosmological Ethics 
among all [the sciences] that can render one clear-sighted to the highest
degree: from the regularity (homoiotēs), the good order (eutaxia), the har-
mony (summetria), the absence of pompousness (atuphia) that one con-
templates on the subject of divine things, it renders those who are aware
of it lovers of that divine beauty, and it accustoms and, so to speak, natur-
izes (phusiō) to a state similar to one’s soul.”35
The famous epigram attributed to the same astronomer is cited by the
Brethren of Purity: “It is said that Ptolemy desired a knowledge of the
stars (nujūm) and he made the science of geometry into a ladder to climb
to the spheres, following which he measured the spheres and their dis-
tances, the stars and their dimensions, then noted them in the Almagest,
and that ascension was made by the soul, not by the body.”36 It is interest-
ing that this passage was placed within a context concerning the liberation
of the soul with regard to matter, in a file of quotations including the fa-
mous passage on ecstasy from the Theology of Aristotle as well as a saying
attributed to Christ. An “epistemological” reflection is turned into a “mys-
tical” one.
Aratus, in his poem on celestial phenomena, expresses this notion in
the form of a myth.37 The digression on the virgin Dikē, who lived among
men during the golden age and who had henceforth disappeared only to
return in an eschatological age, like the one Virgil describes,38 has as its
framework the notion of the departure of the gods. In the past, commu-
nication with the gods was immediate. Today, although the gods have
gone away, there remains a path toward them, and that is celestial phe-
nomena. The movement is the reverse of that of the “Socratic revolution”:
it is no longer a question of descending from the sky into the polities, but
to go up from the polities, whence justice has disappeared, to the sky. In
this way Aratus’s passage is the poetic version of the moral justification for
astronomy.
Finally, studying the sky is not something purely external for the soul.
By studying astronomy, the soul fundamentally studies itself. This is ex-
pressed in a text by Seneca.39 As an introduction to the investigation of
nature through general considerations, he compares ethics with physics.
The physics under consideration is that of the Stoics, which also includes
theology, since it studies a nature that is not radically distinct from God:
“There is no more difference between philosophy and the other sciences
than there is, in my opinion, within philosophy itself, between the part that
has man (ad homines) as an object and the part that considers the divine (ad
deos). . . . From one to the other there is the distance that separates God
from man.” The analogy is simple: physics is to philosophy-in-general as
 The Medieval Model
philosophy is to knowledge-in-general. The comparison turns to the
advantage of physics, which is not surprising, since, before dealing with
physics, it is appropriate to increase its value. But the criterion that assures
its superiority is very interesting: “The science of the human teaches what
must be done (quid . . . agendum sit) on earth; that of the divine what is
done (quid agatur) in the sky.” Physics, the science of what is, triumphs
over ethics, the science of what ought to be.
This passage is thus one of the very rare early formulations of the dis-
tinction that would be at the foundation of moral philosophy in the mod-
ern era, between is and ought (Sein and Sollen). We Moderns would spon-
taneously place what ought to be higher than what is, and Kant justified
this ranking by the primacy of practical reason.40 For Seneca, primacy
incontestably belongs to theoretical reason: the “is” is worth more than the
“ought.” Moral practice is purely preparatory, a via purgativa that finishes
higher than itself: “The first [morals] dissipates our errors and places
within our reach the flame that enables us to see clearly in the perplexities
of life.” Physics alone achieves what morality only promises: “The other
[physics] rises considerably above the darkness in which we struggle, and
those that it has pulled out of the darkness are led by it toward the source
of the light. . . . The virtue to which we aspire is splendid (magnifica), not
that it is sufficient, to be happy, to have been able to keep oneself from vice,
but because it liberates the soul, prepares it for a knowledge of things
of the sky and renders it worthy to participate in divine existence. The
soul has, in its perfection and its plenitude, the happiness that the human
condition can attain, when, full of scorn for all that is evil, it reaches
the heights of the sky and penetrates as far as the intimate recesses of na-
ture. . . . This globe is only a point. . . . In the sky the space is immense,
and the soul (animus) is admitted to take possession of it. . . . Having ar-
rived above, it feeds on it and grows. It seems that, freed from its bonds, it
returns to its source.” These are all expressions that should be taken liter-ally, according to Stoic physics. Or rather, one must constantly transpose
physics and what one might call spirituality onto each other: physics ex-
plains the very being of the soul, which is assumed to be a spark of the di-
vine fire. Study of the sky makes the soul aware of its kinship.
This is why “in the charm that divine things have for it, it finds a proof
of its own divinity (hoc habet argumentum divinitatis suae quod illum divina
delectant). It therefore takes the interest in it that one has, not for that
which is foreign, but for that which is one’s own (nec ut alienis, sed ut suis
interest). . . . It knows well that all of that concerns it directly (scit illa ad se
pertinere). . . . It is there that the soul finally learns what it has sought for
A Cosmological Ethics 
a long time, there that it begins to know God. . . . To be interested in these
questions, to study them, to be absorbed in them, is this not to free one-
self from one’s mortal condition and pass into a superior category of be-
ings?” We can note Seneca’s play on the idea of interest, present as regards
the thing itself, and going as far as the verb chosen by Seneca. The soul has
a natural interest in the study of nature. One might think on the contrary
that nature would be of less concern than morality, which indicates how
to behave, and therefore, that interest in nature would be purely theoreti-
cal, indeed the pursuit of a curiosity in the pejorative sense of the term. But
here, the interest quite literally lies in the fact that the soul is involved. The
Socratic revolution is overthrown: if the soul is a part of the world, self-
knowledge and knowledge of the world are no longer in opposition.41 One
must then pass through physics to reach oneself. In the strict sense of the
term, the study of nature is interesting.
A N I M I TAT I O N O F T H E WO R L D
The view of the world I am examining is not simply a static description of
reality in its hierarchical structure. It also contains a model for moral prac-
tice. The appeal to the good order of celestial phenomena is not solely
theoretical. It is at the same time an instance of what is asked of man, the
most noble of beings relegated within the contingency of the sublunary.
The order of the superior world is a model for men of correct behavior in
life. It is through imitation of the perfect regularity of the celestial figures
that man can successfully put his own sublunary life in order. He can thus
transpose the “Socratic revolution” onto the practical register and “make
the sky descend to the cities.”
A. The Imitation of Order
Plato introduced the idea of an order to be imitated, but the idea had
already been prepared in earlier Hellenism. We have just seen this: the
object of contemplation was not mentioned at the outset and remained
vague. The same is true of the exact nature of the order to be imitated.
This is the case in Euripides, who sketches the portrait of the “contem-
plative man”: “Happy is he who possesses the knowledge brought by in-
vestigation (tēs historias . . . mathēsin), without rushing toward the harm of
his co-citizens nor toward unjust actions, but who contemplates the age-
less order of immortal nature (athanatou kathorōn physeōs kosmon agērōn),
whence he is constituted, whence and how. Such [men], never does the
 The Medieval Model
concern of shameful actions appear before them.”42 The text is not with-
out its problems. What is the referent of the pronoun I have translated
here as “such [men]”? Does it relate to “he who,” passing from the singu-
lar to the plural, drawing from the idea of the “type of man”? Does it re-
late to “the order” which, here too, implies an organized plurality? That
seems more likely, for the moral qualities of the “contemplative one”
are already mentioned in lines  and following. The justice of that person
would thus be the consequence of his familiarity with the order (kosmos)
formed by nature (phusis).
Plato himself does not immediately present the world as the object of
an effort of imitation. In the Republic, Socrates explains to Adeimantus:
“For, presumably, Adeimantus, a man who has his understanding truly
turned toward the things that are has no leisure to look down toward the
affairs of human beings and to be filled with envy and ill will as a result of
fighting with them. But, rather, because he sees and contemplates things
that are set in a regular arrangement and are always in the same condi-
tion—things that neither do injustice to one another nor suffer it at one
another’s hands, but remain all in order according to reason—he imitates
them and, as much as possible, makes himself like them. Or do you sup-
pose there is any way of keeping someone from imitating that which he
admires and therefore keeps company with?”43 The passage remains open:
we do not know whether it concerns stars or ideas, the latter more likely
because of a parallel passage, a bit earlier; and in the same dialogue, the
“sky” in which is found the paradigm of the just city (en ouranōi) is not nec-
essarily a physical reality.44 What is important, however, is that the basic
structure is set: looking above, turning away from the below, the order
(kosmos) as the object of love, the impossibility of not imitating what one
loves. This last assertion, presented in the form of a rhetorical question,
assumes the intellectualist conviction: one cannot know good without want-
ing to, and therefore, “no one is evil by choice.” If it is a matter here, as ev-
erything leads to believe, of ideas, it is remarkable that this structure is
found again elsewhere, transposed onto other objects.
B. The Whole as Example
The basic structure we have just exposed, the imitation of an order, can be
realized in several ways, depending on whether the order to be imitated is
assumed to be manifest in the Whole itself or in a privileged part of it. In
the first case, imitation and adaptation tend to coincide. Stoicism empha-
sized this aspect, especially in its early days. Primitive Stoicism, in fact,
A Cosmological Ethics 
does not assume that the world is stable, but sees it destined to reintegrate
the primitive fire out of which it emerged. Subsequently, the world does
not offer a permanent model. Its present structure is destined to disappear,
and the question of whether eternal recurrence will bring exactly the
same situation remains obscure: it seems that, beginning with the assertion
that there is strict repetition (Socrates once again accused by Anytos, once
again drinking hemlock, etc.), Stoicism evolved toward a less rigid theory.
The same is true, moreover, of the idea of the final conflagration, which,
in middle Stoicism, gives way to the notion of the world’s eternity. Con-
sequently, the object of imitation must above all be the world in its total-
ity, more than the structure of the world at any given moment.
It is thus that Poseidonius defines man’s final goal: “To live while con-
templating (theōrein) the truth (alōtheia) and the order (taxis) of all things
and by contributing to the establishment of them (sunkataskeuazonta)
insofar as possible.”45 We can contribute to seeing that order reigns in all
things to the extent that we are ourselves a part of that order. But we must
still become aware of that order by having an exact vision of it, by inter-
preting it correctly.46 This is why, according to Cicero, “man is born to
contemplate and to imitate the world; he is in no way perfect, but he is a
part of what is perfect.”47
Seneca also considers that the aspect of the world that we should imi-
tate resides in the very “worldliness” of it, in what makes it a totality: “Do
not shine out toward the external. What you have that is good is turned
inside. Thus it is that the world scorns that which is external, for it is con-
tent with its own spectacle. . . . Reason, excited by the senses, goes in
search and, borrowing principles from them (in fact it has nothing else
upon which it might lean in itsquest for the true), returns to itself. Indeed,
the world, the one that surrounds all things, and the god who directs the
universe lean toward the external, but nonetheless return from everywhere
toward their inner self. Let our mind do the same when, following the
senses, it tends through their mediation toward exterior things, let it be
master of them and of its self.”48
Seneca assumes a theory of occasionalist knowledge: knowledge begins
with sensation, but that is only its point of departure. Elsewhere the same
Seneca establishes man’s humanity on his very worldliness: “Nature has
endowed us with a large soul (magnanimos) and, just as it has given some
animals a ferocious spirit, to others a clever spirit, and to others a fearful
spirit, so has it given us a spirit avid for glory and haughty, which does not
seek the place where it will live most securely, but where it will live most
honorably. It is completely similar to the world it is following, as much as mor-
 The Medieval Model
tals are allowed to be, and that it imitates (simillimum mundo, quem, quantum
mortalium passibus licet, sequitur aemulaturque); it places itself in front, it
wants to be praised and looked at.”49 Man’s magnanimity is such—liter-
ally, the human soul is so great—that it is equal to the entire world. The
comparison with the souls of animals is only mentioned to be passed over:
in the end our soul is not comparable to that of this or that animal, thus of
this or that part of the world; its model must be the world itself.
To be wise, then, would be to be perfectly “worldly.” The play on words
is constant, beginning with the hermetic writings, in which it is a matter
of munde mundum servare.50 In a fourth-century text, which constitutes
something like a catechism of the popular Neoplatonism that the emperor
Julian wanted to establish or reestablish, one reads: “We who imitate
the world (ton kosmon mimoumenoi), how could we be better put in order
(kosmētheiēmen)?”51
A century later, the Neoplatonic commentator Elias established the par-
allel between the order of the world and the order of the conduct of the one
who studies it.52 The world is divided into that which only commands, that
which only obeys, and that which both commands and obeys: the divine
commands everything, the sublunary obeys, angels and celestial powers
obey God and command the inferior world. Similarly, we can reinterpret
the Platonic tripartition in ourselves in that sense: reason only commands,
desire obeys, the heart (thumos) receives orders from reason and passes
them on to desire. Elias concludes from this: “Thus then, let the student in
his life be ordered (tetagmenos) and [form] a mikros kosmos, so that through
the intermediary of the order that is in him he knows the unique principle
of the Whole (in fact the order is directed toward the One, the disorder
toward plurality), and that, through the intermediary of the mikros kosmos
that is in him, he recognizes the kosmos. And he will be a mikros kosmos
if, as in the universe (kosmos), better things win out over the less good.”
One of the traditional definitions of so-called “civic” (politikē) philosophy
includes an imitation of God insofar as that is possible for man. Subse-
quently: “If the philosopher imitates God, he puts his conduct in order
(kosmein) in all ways and he makes himself a little world (mikros kosmos).”
The theme is a common one: during the same period, another com-
mentator, David, also mentions Democritus and the idea of microcosm,
but without connecting it to a definition of philosophy. On the other hand,
on several occasions he plays with the verb kosmein as the goal of philos-
ophy.53 Written earlier, a text by Proclus is interesting in that it connects
the theme to an exegesis of the Timaeus.54 In fact it questions the reasons
for the presence of an anthropology in a dialogue that is above all on
A Cosmological Ethics 
physics. It cites several reasons: first, the consideration of man is appro-
priate to us since we propose to live together as men; then, we are a mi-
crocosm, and “the motions akin to the divine part in us are the thoughts
and revolutions of the universe.” But the decisive reason is the practice, at-
tributed to the Pythagoreans, “of connecting to the contemplated object
a discourse on the contemplating subject: when in fact we know what the
World is, it is necessary . . . to add to it the knowledge of what can indeed
be the subject that examines it and grasps it through reason. Now, . . .
Plato . . . has said expressly at the end that, if one wishes to attain a happy
life, “one must assimilate that which contemplates to that which is con-
templated.” For the Whole is eternally happy, and we will also be happy
when we will be assimilated to the Whole, for in that way, we will have
climbed to our Cause. Since, in fact, man below has the same relationship
with the Universe as the Ideal Man has with the Living in Self . . . when
the man below will be assimilated to the Universe, he will also imitate its
model in the mode that is appropriate to him, for he will have become
“ordered” (kosmios) by the fact of his resemblance with the Order of the
World (kosmos), and happy since he will be rendered like the Blessed God.”
These texts, like those attributed to the Stoics, propose the world in
its entirety as an object of imitation. However, they place the accent on
the ordered, hierarchized nature of the world. It is less a matter of imitat-
ing the totality as such than the ordering and layering that turn it, right
through, into a kosmos.
C ELES T I A L M O T I O N S A S C EN T RA L O B J E C T S
In addition, most of the time what we are supposed to imitate is not so
much “nature” in general as it is the celestial world. The difference be-
tween the sublunary and the supralunary becomes the basis for a morality,
in a process that began in the first century ... and culminated in the
third century ..55 Seneca returns to this theme on several occasions. He
begins with a comparison which aims at exhorting whoever wields au-
thority to wonder “whether the state of the world is more pleasant and
more beautiful for the eyes on a serene and pure day or when all things are
shaken up by claps [of thunder] and fires blaze here and there. The face of
a tranquil and measured reign is none other than that of a serene and lu-
minous sky.”56 Then the analogy is completed by receiving its cosmologi-
cal dimension: “The superior and best ordered (ordinatior) part of the uni-
verse, that which is close to the stars, does not bunch together in clouds,
is not pushed into a storm, does not whirl around in a cyclone; it is exempt
 The Medieval Model
from all upsets; the thunder claps lower down. Similarly a sublime spirit,
always calm and placed in a tranquil sphere (statio), stifling in it all the
seeds of anger, is moderate, venerable, harmonious.”57 It is no longer a
question of regulating oneself on meteorological phenomena, but on those
at a higher level; Seneca derives a rule from this, which designates the
model by its name: “The soul of the wise man is similar to the supralunary
world, where the weather is always fine (Talis est sapientis animus, qualis
mundus [mundi status, varia lectio] super lunam: semper illic serenum est).”58
This always serene world (in the strict sense) is the kosmos, the world that,
due to its perfect order, truly deserves its name.
Ancient and medieval ethics therefore contains a dimension in which
moral practice must take the regularity of the world as its model. Such im-
itation is not prescribed for the individual alone. The cosmic order is a
norm for the polis, as well. This is because the universe, according to an
ancient metaphor that continued to be upheld, is itself conceived as a po-
lis. Thus, according to Philo, “for anyone who contemplates the order in
nature and the constitution (politeia) enjoyed by the world-city whose ex-
cellence no words (logos) can describe, needs no speaker to teach himto
practise a law-abiding and peaceful life and to aim at assimilating himself
to its beauties.”59
In addition, to repeat a classic Aristotelian distinction, imitation is not
only practical, it is also poetic. We do not have to seek conformity with the
world only through the rectitude of our ethical actions. We can also pro-
duce works that reproduce its structure, for example, cathedrals.60 Here,
too, the idea is ancient. Architects have sought to construct cities whose
structure imitates that of the kosmos.61
I will now follow the theme of the imitation of celestial motions in the
ancient world, then in each of the three medieval religious worlds we have
been examining.
A. Antiquity
One might assume that the idea of imitating celestial bodies was present,
at least in inchoate form, as early as Hesiod: the structure of the Works and
Days and the ethical significance of the entire work suggest that astronomy
has an influence on the good order of human life.62 Euripides presents
the lunar and solar cycles as examples of equality (isotēs) and of an absence
of envy (phtonos).63 But as we have seen,64 it is only the Timaeus that un-
equivocally says that the object to be imitated is the regulated movement
of the celestial bodies. This dialogue is therefore the direct or indirect
A Cosmological Ethics 
source of the idea of the imitation of the sky and the object of an immense
series of quotations or allusions.
Cicero repeats the idea without referring to its source: “I believe that
the immortal gods planted souls (animos) in human bodies so that there
would be people to take care of things on earth and who, while contem-
plating the order of celestial things, imitate it through the measure and the
constancy of their lives (caelestium ordinem contemplantes imitarentur eum
vitae modo atque constantia).”65
On the other hand, Plutarch expresses the idea without going much
farther than paraphrasing the Timaeus: “For Plato, God placed himself in
the center of everything as a model for all perfection and he grants human
virtue, which is in some way an assimilation (exomoiōsis) to himself, to be-
ings capable of ‘following God.’ Indeed, the Universe which was by nature
anarchic found the principle of its metamorphosis into an organized world
(kosmos) in a resemblance, a participation in the ideal virtue that belongs
to the divinity. This same philosopher also asserts that nature has granted
us sight so that our soul, through the marveled contemplation of the stars
that travel in the sky, becomes accustomed to tasting and seeking order
and harmony (to euskhēmon kai tetagmenon), to be horrified by the unbal-
ance and the wandering of the passions (anarmosta kai planeta pathe), to
avoid the approximate and pleasure, the source of all evil and all discord.”66
The idea that the order of the world is a model by which man must be
inspired becomes common, not to say commonplace. Thus the Neopla-
tonist Iamblichus sings the praises of friendship: Pythagoras had it reign
between all things, gods and men, soul and body, men among themselves.
He brought it to the body through “the pacification and the reinforcement
of faculties hidden within it, by means of health, of the diet that leads to
it, and of temperance (sōphrosunē) by imitating the prosperity (euetēria)
that reigns in the elements of the world.”67
Other authors develop the idea more fully. We have the example of a
representative of the “second sophistics,” Dio Chrysostomus (ca. –after
).68 The orator recommends that his co-citizens of Prusa reconcile with
their neighbors from Apamea. He presents them with the example of the
good order that reigns among the celestial bodies, in which he sees the re-
sults of moral virtues: “Do you not see the eternal order, the agreement,
the temperance of all the sky and the divine and blessed beings who are
there?” On the earth, elements maintain a harmony among them that
comes out of the virtue of justice: “Do you not see . . . with what justice in
reasoning and what moderation they naturally exist, conserving them-
selves and the totality of the world?” Dio then goes on to systematically
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develop the idea of a cosmic order of a moral nature and to propose it as a
model for human behavior.
It is remarkable that he appears quite aware of the difficulty presented
by this type of parallel, since he begins with a concession: “Even if the ar-
gument will appear to some to go too high and not to be at all adaptable
to us.” Unfortunately Dio does not specifically name these fearful minds,
but their hesitation is plausible: do we not transgress the limits assigned to
the human by such a comparison? He himself does not hesitate to suggest:
“These beings, incorruptible by nature, divine, and guided by the thought
of the first god, the greatest one, are preserved by reciprocal friendship and
concord, both those who are stronger and bigger and those who seem
smaller.” Such an agreement is indispensable for them to continue to ex-
ist: “If this community were dissolved and if discord arrived, their nature
would not be to such a degree sheltered from perdition and corruption that
they would not be disturbed and they would not undergo the corruption
. . . that leads from being to nothingness. . . . But the greed and dissention
of the other [elements], which occur in spite of the law, contain an extreme
danger of perdition.” Fortunately, this is only a speculative hypothesis: this
perdition would never affect the entire universe “due to the fact that there
exists between those elements full peace and full justice, and that every-
where all things serve and follow a reasonable law, obeying it and giving in
to it.” Thus the Sun makes way for the stars and the Moon, allows itself to
be eclipsed by the Moon, indeed to be hidden by thin clouds; the Earth
accepts last place and endures everything there. The text continues with a
passage on the harmony between the animal species, which seek not to
trouble each other, rather, to collaborate with each other.
The cosmology underlying this exhortation is essentially Stoic. It is
certainly not a goal in itself: the world is evoked only as a background on
which stands out, for the shame of man, his inability to get along with his
neighbors. This view of the world is interesting, however, in that it puts a
cyclical rather than a static view of the world at the service of a moral ex-
hortation. When it is a matter of presenting the cosmos as a model, it
is most often seen as an eternal order. Here, however, the order unfolds
in time. Furthermore, as a good Stoic, Dio does not establish a clear-cut
border between the supralunary and the meteorological: the eclipse of the
Sun and the fog are placed on the same level. He even assumes a certain
continuity between the air and the terrestrial world, which enables him to
continue with a consideration of the animals. In any case, the good order
of the universe is expressed in a constant way through the moral virtues of
justice, temperance, and calm. However, although the overall context of
A Cosmological Ethics 
the passage clearly indicates that nature is valuable as an example, the idea
of the imitation of nature is not explicitly mentioned.
B. Christians
The idea expressed in the text of the Timaeus survived for a long time in
Antiquity and the Middle Ages, whether its source was explicitly men-
tioned or not. Its fundamental message is found among the pagans that
have just been cited, but also later among Christian thinkers. These thinkers
had access to the Timaeus, either directly, like the Byzantines, or through
the intermediary of a Latin translation. Cicero’s stopped—the coincidence
is curious—at b, just before the passage that contains the idea of an im-
itation of celestial bodies.69 However, Chalcidius continues as far as c
and comments on our passage and was followed by medieval writers such
as William of Conches.70
First among the witnesses of the indirect tradition is Boethius(d. ),
who develops the theme powerfully in the Consolation of Philosophy. The
book had an enormous influence on thinkers of the Middle Ages: it was
translated into many languages, including Catalan and Castilian. It was
done into English by translators as distinguished as King Alfred, Chaucer,
and also Queen Elizabeth I. The French version was made by Jean de
Meung. Finally, it was no doubt the only Latin text to have been simul-
taneously translated into Greek by the Byzantines and adapted into He-
brew.71 Its Latin commentators insisted on the idea of imitation of the
sky.72 Boethius sees the world as the Timaeus sees it. And one of the po-
ems that appears in the Consolation constitutes a sort of compendium of
Plato’s dialogue. Nothing can exist without a minimum of order that pre-
serves its nature. The skies are an example of that law. They are admirable
less through their vastness than through the reason that governs them.73
It is in them that the will of God is most clearly visible and readable: “If
you would see, with pure discerning mind, / The lofty Thunderer’s laws, /
Look up to the heights of the topmost heaven; / There the stars keep their
ancient peace / In the just compact of the universe.”74 Philosophy helped
Boethius to point out the paths of the stars so that we might “shape our
character and the whole manner of our life according to celestial models.”75
It is God who assures the regularity of the celestial movements. Only the
actions of men are free, and disorder reigns on the earth. Let God apply
the same law there by which he dominates the skies: “Steady with that sta-
bility of law / By which you rule the vastness of the heavens.”76 The eighth
poem of the second part concludes: “O happy race of men, / If the love
 The Medieval Model
that rules the stars / May also rule your hearts!”77 The earth is only a point
in the universe. But the man who inhabits it is worth more than precious
stones. Standing erect, he can look at the sky. Let him raise his eyes to the
sky then instead of lowering them to the mud.78 Thus, going beyond the
earth, he will be made worthy of the sky: “Earth overcome / Grants you
the stars.”79
The idea seems to have undergone a particular blossoming in the twelfth
century. Bernard of Tours, in his Cosmographia (ca. ), which is also in-
spired by Plato’s Timaeus, reformulates its teaching within the framework
of the idea of the correspondence between macrocosm and microcosm.
Man was made on the model of the world: “A compound formed of the
two, body and soul, on the model of the celestial order.”80 The microcosm
thus needs the macrocosm: “The second world, man, needs the knowledge
and the care of the first and best.”81 This concern would be addressed by
an imitation of the large world by the small one: “In the small world,
which is man, Physis understands that she is not mistaken, if she takes the
resemblance of the large world as an example for her.”82 This is why man
must be led by the muse Urania through the sky, so that he may know it:
“The human soul must be guided by me [Urania] through all the spaces of
the ether, in order to increase its wisdom.”83 It becomes aware of the sky
in order to strive to resemble it: “Only man, whose configuration bears
witness to the nobility of his mind, will elevate to the stars his noble chief,
so that he can have a model in the inalterable laws and paths of the sky to
lead his life.”84
In his Anticlaudianus, Alain of Lille gives the idea an original spin. The
goal of perfect Man created by Nature with the help of Phronesis and
Theologia is to “vivere lege poli.”85 Let us understand by this that human
action must be regulated according to equity more than the strict letter of
the law, which kills. The letter is the forensic law, which is debated in the
forum, which is thus named ius fori. One can appeal this law to a super-
ior jurisdiction. It is interesting that this jurisdiction is designated by the
term, obviously called by assonance, but perhaps not only for that reason,
“law of the pole” (ius poli).86 The formula refers to that which is in force in
the sky, which is conceived, not only as the dwelling place of the divinity,
but, in the most concrete way, as a sphere launched into the motion of ro-
tation on itself and having as an axis the straight line that passes through
the poles. The formula comes from St. Augustine, who had used it of a
man who had donated his goods to the Church and then changed his
mind. Did he have to deprive his children of that of which the bishop had
become the owner? “The bishop had the power not to make restitution,
A Cosmological Ethics 
but only according to the law of the forum, not according to the law of the
sky (jure fori, non jure poli).”87 Augustine’s context does not emphasize the
cosmic aspect of the idea, and the expression scarcely suggests more than
“the Heaven,” as a euphemism substituted for the divine name. This is
again the case in Gratian, who cites the passage by Augustine, thus con-
ferring upon it the dignity of a principle of law.88 But the image was sub-
sequently taken more literally, to refer to the order of the spheres.
Gerhoh of Reichersberg (d. ) closely follows a text by Rupert of
Deutz (d. ca. ) while subjecting it to interesting changes. Rupert places
the seven gifts of the Holy Spirit and the seven days of creation side by
side. The work of the fourth day, the creation of the stars, corresponds to
the spirit of strength or courage (fortitudo), since philosophers, pagans and
Christians alike, have forever admired the strength and the power of the
stars, “which maintain their course with such a determined and stable reg-
ularity,” established on the order of God, (Rupert continues with a purely
doxographic outpouring) “that people thought they were alive and con-
trolled the destiny of men.”89 However, Gerhoh, who up until then had
been copying word for word, draws a different conclusion from this: “so
that their strength is justifiably an object of admiration and at the same
time of emulation for rational man, convincing man of disobedience if he
happens to leave the orbit of the commandment that is proposed to him (a
proposito sibi exorbitat praecepto).”90 The “strength” or rather the constancy
of the stars should not only awaken our admiration, but should also inspire
us to imitate it, indeed, to make us ashamed of our disobedience, which
then appears, as Gerhoh suggests, to be as serious as a star leaving its orbit.
Dante uses the idea of imitation of the sky to develop an argument in
favor of monarchical government: “Every son is in a good (indeed, ideal)
state when he follows in the footsteps of a perfect father, insofar as his own
nature allows. Mankind is the son of heaven, which is quite perfect in all
its workings; for man and the sun generate man, as we read in the second
book of the Physics. Therefore mankind is in its ideal state when it follows
the footsteps of [the skies], insofar as its nature allows. And, since the
whole sphere of [the skies] is guided by a single movement . . . and by a
single source of motion . . . , then . . . mankind is in its ideal state when it
is guided by a single ruler (as by a single source of motion) and in accor-
dance with a single law (as by a single movement).”91 Dante bases his ar-
gument explicitly on a text by Aristotle. In the second book of the Physics,
Aristotle gives an interesting variant of his common formula “man engen-
ders man” by completing it with “and the sun” (that is: with the help of the
sun). It was thus a matter of placing animal generation in the larger con-
 The Medieval Model
text of cosmology.92 From it Dante derives the terse formula that we are
“sons of heaven/the sky.” To the sun are added the other celestial bodies
and their influences, in the spirit of the astrology of the period. The kin-
ship between the sky and man is not just a metaphor, since the celestial in-
fluences form the human embryo when the condition of the sky and themixture of matter in it allow.93
The same idea is found among post-Copernican writers, such as Petrus
Ramus (d. ). Ramus takes the Platonic praise of astronomy literally but
substitutes music as its object: “Music (as Plato thought of it), sister of as-
tronomy and completely similar to it, not only produces for the mind an
honorable relaxation and agreeably causes the troubles that concern it to
cease, but through the imitation of celestial revolutions (conversiones) calms
the floating and wandering revolutions of the human mind, which are re-
lated to them.”94
The idea of imitating the sky contains something like an internal di-
alectic. Such an imitation cannot in fact be fully accomplished without
having to neutralize the distinction on which it is based and to equate the
earth with the sky. This would be all the more true when that moral neu-
tralizing coincided with the assertion of a physical homogeneity between
celestial and terrestrial matter. An idea of this sort is already present in
Epicureanism. This is the case in the famous passage by Lucretius assert-
ing that victory over the gods of Olympus makes us equal to the skies. It
is even clearer when the anonymous author of the Poem of the Etna asserts
that seeking to know the earth is a concern that connects us to the stars of
the sky.95 In the Christian realm, the distinction between the sky and the
earth is only temporary. At the Resurrection, “sky and earth will be joined,
and there will only be the sky remaining.”96 Alain of Lille develops the
idea. His point of departure is a conception of nature that already rela-
tivizes the clear distinction between the sky and the earth. The garden of
Nature, which is described according to the rules of the topos of the locus
amoenus, although located on the earth, goes up to the sky. It also includes
the stars: “Adorned with its own stars . . . the earth risks painting a new
sky.”97 Once perfect man has won a victory over the vices, the earth no
longer has anything to envy the sky: “Virtues govern the world. Hence-
forth, the stars and the dwelling of the axis [of the world] do not have
more charm than the terrestrial globe; henceforth the land rivals the sky,
henceforth the earth is wrapped in the shine of the ether, henceforth
Olympus covers the earth.”98
Meister Eckhart also unfolds a complex dialectic of the reversal of op-
posites. He indulges in etymological games on homo, humus—identified
A Cosmological Ethics 
with terra—and humilis, and on several occasions recalls the paradox of
geocentrism: for the earth, to want to distance itself from the sky would
be to get closer to it. One text formulates his conclusion in a way similar
to Alain of Lille’s: “Humility and patience make a sky from the earth. . . .
Among the humble, the earth is a sky, the lowest is the highest. What is
deep and what is high (altum) are the same thing. Humility and the earth
are of the deep, the sky is of the high.”99
C. Muslims
At the beginning of philosophical reflection in Islamic lands, Muslim
thinkers adopted the Platonic theme with great enthusiasm. It is difficult
to know through which channels the influence of the Timaeus was able to
reach the Muslim world. But due to that influence we have a summary of
this dialogue by Galen, lost in Greek but preserved in Arabic translation.
However, as we have seen, the passages containing the idea of the imitation
of the sky are not included.100 On the other hand, one of the most famous
books of magic in the Middle Ages, known in Latin by the title Picatrix,
relates a warning given by Aristotle to Alexander. The Wise Man is sup-
posed to have recommended to the Emperor to make no movement that
does not imitate the movement of the sky and does not correspond to it.101
Al-Farabi gives a clearly collective, political version of the idea.102 He
puts into place a three-sided correspondence between the structure of the
organism, the hierarchy of the cosmic spheres, and the order of the virtu-
ous city, which should imitate those two orders. The parts of the city are
arranged in an order of mutual dependency. In this way, artificial reality,
produced out of political art, “will become similar to natural beings, and
its ranks will be similar to those beings who begin with the First and fin-
ish at the raw matter and at the elements; their connection and their at-
tachment will be similar to those of the various beings with each other. . . .
It is clear . . . that the political assembling and the whole that comes out
of it in the cities resembles the assembling of the bodies in the entire
world. It is also clear . . . that there is in the whole of what the city and the
nation contain equivalents of what the whole world contains.” Farabi de-
velops the idea by more or less accentuating this or that aspect, depending
on the subtly varied contexts of his different works in political philosophy.
The most constantly stressed aspect is that of the hierarchical construction
of reality: “In the world there is first of all a principle, then other principles
according to their ranks, beings that come from those principles, other be-
ings that follow those beings according to their ranks, until one reaches the
 The Medieval Model
last of the beings through its rank in the being. Similarly, in the whole of
what the nation or the city contains, there is a primary principle, then
other principles follow it, other citizens who follow those principles, and
others who follow them, until one reaches the last citizens through the
ranking in the city and humanity. There are therefore in what the city con-
tains the equivalents of what the whole world contains.”
Avicenna is perhaps the author in whose writing the idea is best situated
within an overall view of the soul’s destiny. The idea is dealt with in the
context of a cosmology, which, far from functioning as a metaphor for a
human order, is taken in the physical sense of the word. Avicenna sets forth
the idea in a short treatise which is probably his last work: “The celestial
bodies are not constituted from a mixture of these four elements but . . . are
totally lacking in these opposites. Furthermore, it is only the involvement
with these opposites that hinders the reception of the divine effluence. . . .
The closer, therefore, a temperament is to a balanced state, the more is a
person predisposed to receive this effluence. Since the celestial bodies are
totally devoid of the opposites, they are receptive to the divine effluence;
human beings, on the other hand, no matter how balanced their tempera-
ments may be, are not free from flaws [due to the involvement with] the
opposites. As long as the rational soul is associated with the human body,
no corporeal entity [jirm] can be completely ready to receive the divine
effluence or to have perfectly revealed to it all the intelligibles. But when a
person expends all his efforts to purify [his rational soul] through knowl-
edge, acquires the propensity for contact with the divine effluence. . . , has
a balanced temperament, and lacks these opposites which hinder his re-
ception of the divine effluence, then there comes about in him a certain simi-
larity to the celestial bodies and he resembles in his purity the seven mighty ones,
i.e., the seven celestial spheres.”103 The resemblance to celestial bodies and, in
particular, to the seven mobile stars, here called the seven mighty ones, is
not, as in most of the texts we have seen, the result of a direct effort of im-
itation. It is the consequence, not targeted for itself, of an effort of purifi-
cation of the self. Man is handicapped by the presence of his rational soul
in a body, a sublunary body. Such a body is composed of the four elements.
As those elements come from a combination of two of the primordial
qualities, which are contrasted in pairs (hot/cold; dry/moist), they do not
have the absolute stability of the celestial bodies which are made of a fifth
element, of a perfect purity and free of all opposites. Itis this stability that
the wise man imitates from his place on earth. The philosophical practice
ends up, if we may say so, in quintessentializing man.
In other texts, perhaps more representative of his most mature thought,
A Cosmological Ethics 
Avicenna presents an original concept of the imitation of the world that
pulls imitation out of the commonplace realm of a simple physical mim-
icking: “The perfection belonging to the rational soul is to become an in-
tellectual world (‘ālam ‘aqlı̄), in which is imprinted the form of the Whole,
intelligent ordering (niz� ām ma‘qūl) of the Whole and the good that spreads
over the Whole, beginning with the principle of the Whole, advancing as
far as the noble substances, then the absolute spiritual realities, then the
spiritual realities that are suspended in a certain way from the bodies, then
to the superior bodies through their dispositions and their strengths, then
[the soul] continues in this way until achieving fully in itself the dispo-
sition of the entire Being, and changes into an intelligent world (‘ālam
ma‘qūl), parallel to the entire existing world, contemplating what is ab-
solute truth, absolute good, true beauty, united to it, painted in its image
and in its disposition, affiliated to its company and having become part of
its substance.”104 The idea that the soul is transformed into the intelligible
world is originally from Plotinus.105 It is encountered in the Theology of
Aristotle,106 whereas that work—the fact is interesting as regards the trans-
mission of the Neoplatonic legacy to the Arab world—does not para-
phrase the passages of Plotinus where the idea is found. The idea is again
found in Miskawayh,107 and elsewhere in Avicenna’s early writings.108 But
the passage I have just quoted is important because it clearly shows that
this transformation is parallel to Avicenna’s view of the entire universe, in-
cluding the physical universe. The order of the soul consists of reproduc-
ing the order of the universe. It thus also encompasses knowledge of the
physical universe or, at the very least, of the superior, celestial bodies. To
imitate the whole is also to enact the intelligible reverse side of the sen-
sible world—an idea that would leave traces in Gersonides’ conception of
beatitude. On the other hand, Avicenna leaves the moral dimension of
the imitation of the world in the shadows.
Finally, there is another dimension of Avicenna’s thought in which the
celestial bodies play a more direct role in the destiny of the human soul,
since it seems that they help make up for the disappearance of the vital
breath after the soul’s separation from the body. Indeed they provide the
soul with a minimum of materiality that enables it to continue to exercise
an activity of the imagination—and therefore to experience the pleasures
and the pains of a Hereafter that belongs to the realm of imagination.109
The way the theme is approached by Ibn T� ufayl deserves special treat-
ment.110 We are familiar with the overall schema of the H� ayy ibn Yaqz� ān:
the eponymous hero is alone on a desert island, sheltered from all corrup-
tion, but also deprived of any education. Without any external help, and
 The Medieval Model
only by the strength of his natural abilities to reason, he is able to attain the
highest metaphysical knowledge. H� ayy ultimately possesses perfect knowl-
edge of the structure of the world. He deduces its creation by God. He dis-
covers he is called to imitate him, indeed, to assimilate himself to him.
The penultimate stage of the process implies an imitation of the stars.
For him to know how to assimilate himself to God, the method em-
ployed up to then was no longer sufficient. H� ayy seeks in the world an ex-
ample of what he must do. The stars and the spheres seem to him to pos-
sess remarkable qualities, both as to their bodies and as to their intelligence.
Their bodies are transparent (the spheres) and brilliant (the stars). A for-
tiori reasoning enables him to conclude that the stars also possess an intel-
ligent essence that knows God: if he, a being plunged into the needs of the
inferior world, possesses this essence, how much more so do the stars who
escape that earthly servitude.111
That essence thus renders him similar to the celestial bodies.112 Indeed,
the most perfect of all animal minds is such that one might almost say that
its form has no opposite and that it thereby resembles the celestial bodies,
whose form has, and this time quite literally, no opposite.113 That mind
has properties that assure it a resemblance with the celestial bodies: if it
were placed—a hypothesis that can’t become real—midway between the
center of the world (and of the earth) and the extreme end of that toward
which the fire can climb, it would remain there at rest in perfect balance.
“If it moved according to the place, it would move around the center, as
the celestial bodies move; if it moved in place, it would move on itself;
it would be of spherical shape, since anything else is impossible. Subse-
quently, it would strongly resemble the celestial bodies.”114
The comparison with the animals enables H� ayy to go from hypothesis
to the statement of reality. It convinces him that he is himself the animal
whose mind is balanced, and which resembles all the celestial bodies. Of
the two parts of which he is composed, the coarser, the body, is in every-
thing the more similar to the celestial substances that transcend the world
of generation and corruption. As for the nobler part, it is that which knows
God: “When it became clear to him how he had as an advantage, over the
rest of the animal species, a resemblance to the celestial bodies, he saw [or:
was of the opinion] that he had to take them as a model, that he must im-
itate their actions and that he assimilate his effort to them.”115
H� ayy becomes aware that his actions are divided into three groups, ac-
cording to whether they imitate those of the animals, the celestial bodies,
or God. He finds he is obliged to perform three sorts of actions that as-
similate him respectively to these three levels of being. The first comes to
A Cosmological Ethics 
him from his body; the second from his animal spirit; the third from his
true essence,116 following an implicit Platonic tripartition, that of the parts
of the soul according to the Republic and the Timaeus: (a) The first comes
from the body and corresponds to the diversity of desires (epithumētikon).
In the world it corresponds to the sublunary world, compared elsewhere
to the animalcules that are formed in the intestines.117 (b) The second comes
from the animal spirit lodged in the heart.118 It is the Platonic thumos. In
the world the celestial spheres, beginning with that of the fixed stars, the
origin of movement, are classically compared to the heart, the source of
movement in the organism.119 (c) The third comes from that which, in
H� ayy, is his true essence, which coincides with that of God.
The first type of action is necessary only hypothetically. It is necessary
in fact that the body survive for the animal spirit to continue to reside in
it. That spirit is indispensable, because it is through it that the second im-
itation is accomplished, that of the celestial bodies.120 This second imita-
tion provides only an impure intuition (mušāhada), for in it one keeps an
awareness of one’s own essence. The third imitation is the only perfectly
pure one.
Ibn T� ufayl thus describes the way in which his hero undertakes the
three assimilations: (a) The first involves the maintenance of his body. A
rather brief passage is devoted to this. H� ayy imposes a rule upon himself
to consume only what will cause no risk to the survival of an individual
plant or, if he is forced to feed on flesh, to the species. He eats as little as
possible, and only when hunger forces him to.121 (b) The second assimila-
tion, to the celestial bodies, is the object of a somewhat longer passage,122
and is above all more articulate:it is distinguished from the other two pas-
sages in that it includes three divisions itself—thereby reproducing on a
smaller scale the structure of the entire passage with its three divisions.
The celestial bodies can in fact be considered from three points of view:
their attributes refer either to their relationship to what is beneath them,
or to their own essence, or finally to their relationship to God. Their rela-
tionship to the inferior world of generation and corruption is the entirety
of beneficial influences that emanate from them. Their essential proper-
ties are related, on the one hand, to the matter of which they are made,
which communicates a perfect purity to them; and on the other hand, to
the movement by which they are animated, which is circular, whether ro-
tation or revolution. Their relationship to God is also double. Some of the
attributes that express this arise in fact out of speculation: to have the con-
stant intuition of God. But others arise out of practice and its motives: to
desire him, to obey him, to rule his movement on his will.123
 The Medieval Model
Ibn T� ufayl’s central idea is not exactly the one we have seen in Plato and
in subsequent tradition. In that thinking it was only a question of imitat-
ing the action of the stars—more precisely, the perfect regularity of their
movements. Here, more is at stake. On the one hand the imitation of the
actions of the celestial bodies bears not only on their harmoniously regu-
lated movements, but also on the beneficial influence that they exercise
over the inferior world. This idea is encountered elsewhere, for example in
a passage from the Brethren of Purity which recommends that man imi-
tate the generosity of the sun.124 On the other hand, and above all, its ob-
ject is not only the actions of the stars, but something like the intent that
animates and explains it: the stars demonstrate perfect obedience toward
God and scrupulously carry out his will. Again, the idea is not new.
H� ayy therefore strives to imitate these three different attributes. Re-
garding the first, he aims to exercise an influence over what is placed below
him that is as beneficial as the stars’. Let us note that there is no indication
that H� ayy himself receives any influence whatsoever. This concern inspires
in him a maximum of beneficence toward the plants and the animals.
Among the second group of attributes, purity is achieved through taking
care of the body. Circular movement is the object of a very literal imita-
tion: H� ayy circles around his island, his house, or a rock, and turns around
on himself in a way that clearly evokes the practices of the Mawlawiyah
who are called, for that reason, “whirling dervishes.”125
The third set of attributes is the object of only partial imitation. The ce-
lestial bodies have theoretical activities, but practical ones as well. Now,
Ibn T� ufayl mentions only H� ayy’s efforts to be absorbed in the exclusive
contemplation of God. The desire to serve that the celestial bodies are
supposed to feel, their obedience, the movements that result from it, do
not have a counterpart in H� ayy’s activity. Ibn T� ufayl hides the imperfec-
tion of the parallelism between H� ayy and his model by later mentioning
the circular movement which, through the vertigo that it provokes in
H� ayy, helps his hero to abstraction from the sensible world.126 But two
points are noteworthy: on the one hand, the rotation is no longer set in re-
lation to the stars, and there are other ways to achieve vertigo. On the other
hand, it was not the circular movement as such that Ibn T� ufayl attributed
to the celestial bodies. They are supposed “not to turn away from him
[God], but to be besotted by him, to conduct themselves according to his
decree, to bend to the accomplishment of his plans, not to move except
through his will and under the power of his hand.”127
Now, this aspect of things is of the very essence, since it gives the imita-
tion of celestial movements all its value. This imitation must not be a simple
A Cosmological Ethics 
conformity; there must be inward adherence. If we may repeat a distinc-
tion—elementary, moreover—observed by Kant, one must imitate the
stars not through legality but through morality. In less anachronistic terms,
the “duties of the members” are nothing without the “duties of the heart.”
This is moreover what is implied by the program that H� ayy sets for
himself at the beginning of the last phase of his intellectual and spiritual
ascension: “There was thus also obligation for him to work to acquire him-
self his [God’s] qualities from every point of view wherever possible, to
take his character, to imitate his acts, to apply himself zealously to accom-
plish his will, to abandon himself to him, to give in to all the decrees with
all his heart, internally and externally, etc.”128
We can note in particular that these two passages have an essential no-
tion in common—the will of God. The last one quoted, appearing first in
the text, accomplishes a decisive but tacit shift: one goes from a God en-
dowed with properties to this same being possessing character traits, ac-
tions, and indeed a will—which had never been said until then. The idea
of divine will poses quite specific problems: How can that will be expressed
so that one might follow it with a full understanding of it?
Here, will is attributed to God only following a consideration of the
celestial bodies. It therefore seems that such consideration legitimizes the
application of the idea of will to God. But contemplating the movements
of the stars does not enable one to go from a factual statement of their ac-
tions to the idea that those actions are the expression of an obedience—
any more than seeing someone conduct himself honestly is enough to con-
vince us that he does so out of respect for the Moral Law.
The third assimilation is the loftiest. It assumes the previous consider-
ation of the attributes of God.129 It therefore rests on a reversal. Ibn T� ufayl
stresses this very clearly in noting that H� ayy had become aware of all that
while he was still involved in purely theoretical speculations and had not yet
reached the practical (šurū‘ fı̄ ’l-‘amal).130 It is thus no longer a question of
God’s “conduct,” of his “actions,” or of his “will.” A problem appears to have
been raised, which comes out of the comparison between the last two as-
similations: the third has the advantage over the second of possessing total
purity due to the complete disappearance of self-consciousness. But, on the
other hand, it represents a certain regression. H� ayy, plunged into direct con-
templation and a recluse in his cave, is totally inactive. There is no longer
any question of his spinning around, or of his being concerned with the
world below him: finished “his care (i‘tinā’) for animals and plants, his com-
passion (rah� ma) for them, his concern with ridding them of shackles.”131
There was something like a providence there; one can note the proximity
 The Medieval Model
of i‘tinā’ and ‘ināya, and the inevitable echo in the word rah� ma, that is, the
attribute of mercy, so basic to the god of Islam. At the highest level of the
mystical union, all of that is struck down. What becomes then of “prac-
tice”? It was a question, where Ibn T� ufayl repeated this classic distinction,
of a “passage to practice” for which he employed the word šurū‘. Its root
is the same as in šar‘, šarı̄‘a, etc. Should we see here an allusion to the role
of the religious Law, as a determination of what is to be done? As it hap-
pens, at this moment in the narrative the character Asāl intervenes and,
with him, reference to positive religion. Subsequently it will no longer be
a question of celestial bodies as rules for action. The practices exposed by
Asāl will be those of the Muslim religion.
In this way we catch a glimpse of the structure of the H� ayy ibn Yaqz� ān,
as well as of a problem that it raises. Let us raise it again: the higheststage
of the mystical union, that is, direct identification with God, causes the
disappearance of what the preceding stage had brought, the imitation of
celestial bodies. The first imitation enabled the formation of negative pre-
cepts—to abstain from doing harm. With the second, one can form pos-
itive precepts—to do good, to intervene in nature. With the third assim-
ilation, however, no practice can be formed. To repeat a classic distinction,
H� ayy’s ultimate religion no longer consists of anything but “opinions”;
“actions” have disappeared.
This raises another problem: is God generous, provident, and so on? If
assimilation to God excludes the attitudes equivalent to those qualities,
must one conclude that imitation and assimilation, indeed absorption into
God, exclude each other? Would the celestial bodies teach us something
about God that direct assimilation to him cannot teach us? Is this supple-
ment provided by the revealed religions? It is of a “political” nature, in the
broad sense, in that it concerns relationships with others. The imitation of
the stars is more “political” than pure mysticism. It permits concern for
others, since the spiritual level in which it is located maintains an aware-
ness of self: I need that awareness so that I can know there is something
else outside me.
In this way, the structure of the work gains coherence. That the overall
movement is one of ascension is useless to note. That after the highest
summit only a descent can occur, again, this is obvious. But one can note,
in addition, that the descent, or its first step, that is, Islam in its purest
form, the “spiritual” Islam of Asāl, corresponds quite exactly to the penul-
timate step of the ascending movement, that is, the imitation of the stars.
Both establish a practice, which, moreover, boils down to similar actions.
The astral religion of H� ayy has the same result as the Islam of Asāl.
A Cosmological Ethics 
As for the celestial bodies, they reappear later, in a different form: they
are no longer models for a practice. They henceforth belong to the objects
of the contemplation of God: the divine to which it is a question of as-
similating is not an undifferentiated One, it is also a world, in the circum-
stances the Farabian/Avicennian architecture of the spheres layered in
decreasing order to the sublunary. Providence, which seemed lost with the
“abandonment of works” which was brought by the highest stage of the
union, is regained once one understands that the cosmic edifice and the re-
ciprocal action of the parts of the universe are themselves an integral part
of the object to be contemplated and to which one is to assimilate. In this
way, cosmological mysticism also opens up onto a mystical cosmology.
D. Jewish Thought
Finally, the theme is encountered in Judaism as well. But, to my knowl-
edge at least, it did not appear very early on. Granted, one of the Talmu-
dic rabbis, Bar Qappara, recommended studying the stars, in which he
sees the wisdom by which Israel could be rendered respectable in the eyes
of the pagan nations, according to Deuteronomy :.132 But this wisdom
is not yet an imitation of the stars. All the less so, no doubt, in that the
verse that stresses the identification of wisdom with astronomy bears, in
its obvious meaning, on the Divine Law itself. I have not found it to occur
before the eleventh century.
Rashi (d. ), in his commentary on Deuteronomy : (“I call heaven
and earth to witness against you”), assumes that celestial movements could
serve as examples of obedience: “The Holy One Blessed Be He said to Is-
rael, Gaze upon (histakkelû) the heavens which I have created to serve you:
have they ever changed their ways (middah)? Has the sphere of the sun
ever failed to rise in the East to give light to the entire world?, as it is stated
(Eccl. .): ‘The sun riseth and the sun goeth down.’ Gaze upon the earth
which I have created to serve you: Has it ever changed its ways? Have you
ever sown it and (the seed) did not sprout? Or have you ever sown wheat
and it yielded barley? If these, which were made not for reward and not for
loss, (i. e.,) if they are found worthy, they do not receive a reward, and if
they commit sin, they are not punished, (nevertheless) they did not change
their ways, (then) you, who if you are found worthy, you will receive a re-
ward, and if you commit sin, you will be punished, most certainly (you
should not change to evil ways). Therefore choose life.”133
An Egyptian Jew, probably Hananael b. Shmuel (d. ca. ), explains
a verse in which God says: “I say, ‘You are gods (elohim), . . . nevertheless,
 The Medieval Model
you shall die like men’” (Psalm :): “I desired that your souls resemble
those of the stars which are perfect and noble souls, which suffer no influ-
ence but on the contrary influence others. Yet you did not desire your souls
to be thus, and therefore they have become truncated and lifeless, devoid
of action, motion, and influence, but [on the contrary] passively influ-
enced by others, incapable of attaining the elevated stations. They thus re-
semble the most abject of the human species. . . .”134
Nachmanides (d. ) explains the significance of the tree of knowl-
edge of good and evil. Before eating the fruit, “Man did by nature what he
should have done according to generation (kefı̄ ha-tōledet), as the skies and
all their hosts do, ‘true workers because their work is truth and they do not
change their role,’ without having in their actions either love or hate. On
the other hand, the fruit of that tree is that which causes to be born in them
that eat it the will and the desire to choose something or its opposite, for
good or for evil.”135 The fall is like a degradation, a passing from the level
of natural obedience to the level of deliberate choice, a choice that in-
cludes the possibility of a preference for evil. The highest level is illus-
trated by the way in which the skies in their ordering fulfill the mission
that is assigned to them.136
T H E D I S O B ED I EN T A N I M A L
If, in this perspective, nature obeys its Creator, man appears conversely as
an exception compared to the rest of nature. He is distinguished from the
other animals by distancing himself from the laws of nature.137 Modern
thinkers frequently see in this transgression a reason to be proud, indeed
an occasion for silly Promethean tirades. For ancient and medieval thinkers
it was not for that reason that man surpasses the animals, but rather through
his obedience to superior laws. Inasmuch as he is the disobedient animal,
for them man is less well endowed than the animals that are thus proposed
to him as a model. Francis of Assisi referred to all of creation: “All the crea-
tures under the sky serve and know their Creator and obey him, in their
way, better than you.”138 This is why man’s disobedience must inspire the
disapproval of all of creation. God’s anger is also that of all creation.139
One can uphold animals, not only as able craftsmen, thereby proposing
them as examples of the ingenuity by which man might be inspired,140 but
also as moral examples. Thus their eagerness for work must shame the lazy.
In the Bible, Proverbs invites the lazy one to consider the ant and to learn
a lesson of wisdom from it; Marcus Aurelius was encouraged by and
invoked the example of little industrious animals.141 The wisdom of the
A Cosmological Ethics 
world can thus also be that of an animal. A Talmudic rabbi, Yohanan, even
makes a general statement, in a perhaps partially ironic declaration that
implies something like a notion of a natural law: if the Law had not been
revealed, that the animals could have given men lessons in moral virtue:
the cat would have taught us modesty, the ant honesty, the dove chastity,
the cock manners.142 Among the pagans, animals encourage scorn for
death: the fear of death does not exist for them. Their example was already
proposed by the Ancients, and by Râzî.143
Conversely, man shows proofafter them.21 It is conceivable that in these listings we might have a man-
ifestation of a more general turning point in thought, which would be
characteristic of civilizations earlier than the Axial Age. The Egyptologist
Eva Brunner-Traut has gathered many phenomena relating to those civi-
 Setting the Stage
lizations under the concept of “aspective” (a word created to contrast with
“perspective”).22 This is what she calls the mental attitude that consists of
juxtaposing the various aspects of a reality without seeking to grasp them
from a single point of view. But she leaves aside that aspect of cosmology.
b) These civilizations also use terms that designate the idea of totality.
Thus in Egypt “creation” is in fact a self-genesis of the god Atum. What he
“creates” is “everything” (tm); he is therefore the “master of all” (nb tm).23
The word, perhaps related to Hebrew tamam and Arabic tamm, has the
sense of “complete,” “whole.” Combined with the name Atum it creates
one of those etymological plays on words of which the Egyptians were so
fond. The “Onomastics of Amenemope” promises to provide an under-
standing of “everything that exists.”24 In Mesopotamia, it appears that the
translation by “world” of certain terms is only the result of a misinterpre-
tation.25 But elsewhere we find words that can be translated so, even though
their primary meaning is also totality. This is the case with gimirtu, or
kiššatu.26 We even find heavily pleonastic combinations, as when the gods
say to Marduk: “On you alone . . . we have conferred Royalty over all of
the entire Universe (ni-id-din-ka šar-ru-tu4 kiš-šat kal gim-re-e-ti).”27 The
word that it was indeed necessary to render by Universe also in fact signi-
fies totality, so that we must risk something impossible such as “the whole
of all totality.”
This totality, listed or substantivized into an adjective, is not yet a world.
What it lacks to be one is, paradoxically, something that is too many. The
world is constituted as a totality because it unfolds before a subject, before
which reality is firmly established, as if independent of it. The world
swells up from the absence of the subject in it. It is necessary, for the world
to appear, that the organic unity that linked it to one of its inhabitants—
man—be broken. Reciprocally, as we will see, it was from the moment
when the world appeared in its autonomy that the presence of man in it
would be able to arise as a separate issue. If this is true, what prevented the
rise of the idea of world is not the incomplete nature of the listing of the
elements of the world. Rather it is, on the contrary, that the concept—
more or less explicit—that ancient civilizations made of that order was ex-
tended too widely, in that that order encompassed the action of the gods
or men. Thus the Egyptians represented reality as a continuity in the midst
of which man did not have a particularly favored place.28 We can then see
how the very division of all of reality into “heaven” and “earth,” if it pre-
pares in a way the emergence of the concept of world, is at the same time
that which prevents it from coming fully into being. For that division oc-
curs following an implicit criterion that is connected to the human: earth
Prehistory: A Pre-Cosmic Wisdom 
and heaven are contrasted as things that man can, at least in principle,
grasp and that which completely escapes him. The “world” cannot appear
as such until the time when that criterion is placed in parentheses. This
was only to be the case in Greece. It was there, and there alone, that that
“distanced” position would appear, that “Archimedes point” from which
man would be able, “conscious of being a subject (subjektbewußt), submit
nature to objective research.”29
So that the idea of a “physical” universe—which is specified only by fac-
tors that relate to “nature”—is in no way primitive. Just the opposite is true:
the idea of “nature” (phusis), even if it seeks to grasp what is original, is not
originary, but derived; it is already the result of a reflection, more precisely
of a separation between that which has its principle in the human activity
of fabrication or estimation, i.e., the artificial (tekhnē) and the conven-
tional (nomos), and that which grows by itself, spontaneously, the natural.30
A CO S M I C O RD ER ?
Furthermore, the concept of cosmos as a universal order scarcely arose in
ancient times. The hypothesis has been made that this latency of the con-
cept of cosmos was due to the fact that a notion of that kind was indeed
the milieu in which ancient civilizations were steeped, and such a milieu,
because it was a given, could not not remain invisible.31 Whatever the truth
may be, ancient civilizations had to conceive of man’s humanity on the ba-
sis of other referents. It was not by imitating the order of the world, or by
harmoniously inserting himself in it, that man fulfilled himself. The rela-
tionship of imitation, of an original where it obtains its likeness, is in a
sense inverted: rather it started from social reality to go toward the cosmos.
It was thus, first of all, because the cosmic order was conceived on the
model of the polis.32 In Mesopotamia, for example, the gods clearly rep-
resented elementary forces, such as the sky, the storm, the earth, the wa-
ter. And the system of the world was no more than their combination,
which perhaps reproduced a very ancient political situation, one that had
already disappeared in the historical era, and which might have been a
primitive form of democracy.33
Next, the cosmic order was not conceived, in Mesopotamia at any rate,
simply on the basis of that of the polis. The two concepts were part of the
same whole within which everything interacted. Indeed, that which oc-
curred within the polis was supposed to exercise an influence, either posi-
tive or negative, on the cosmic order. This is an idea that would survive for
a long time. One need only think of the “waste land” which, in Arthurian
 Setting the Stage
romance, punishes a human sin. Limiting ourselves to an example from
ancient civilizations, it is thus that in Ugarit a disturbance in the cosmic
order—a disturbance essentially located in the realm of plants, such as in-
fertility—could only be repaired if one began by reestablishing the social
order. “What this co-belonging presumed was a representation of the unity
of the cosmos: if there were no order in the natural cosmos, that could be
a result of a perturbation in the social cosmos. The first thing to be done
to reestablish the order of the natural cosmos was to reestablish order in
the social cosmos.” The king, guarantor of the social order, could thus rep-
resent the god who maintained the order of the world.34
Was something like an order of the world, predating human activity
and being proposed as a model for that activity, formulated in ancient civ-
ilizations? For some time it was believed that the Egyptians had found that
formula in their concept of ma’at, personified as a divinity, and that it was
associated with the idea of wisdom as it is presented in the Bible, as well
as with the Greek idea of themis, or even the logos of Philo.35 This concept
would express the way the universe forms a harmonious whole in which
man must find his rightful place—the word “rightful” implying both the
idea of right, of harmony, as well as that of justice. The idea is present
among the philosophers,36 but it has also been held by philologists. This is
the case of H. H. Schmid: “In Egypt one uses the term Ma’at to designate
that cosmic order that was experienced as such by all the civilizations of
the ancient Orient, that has been related to the creation of the world by
the supreme God who is the author of it and which is guaranteed by the
king who is the God’s son.” “He who lives rightly is in accord with the or-
der of the world.” However, one can also reverse the relationship. In that
case we must say that “wisdom does not just imply an eternal, ideal, meta-
physical order,of an exceptional sensuality; he alone can
be bestial, a paradox already found in Aristotle.144 A recurrent example is
his sexuality: man is not limited to a season of lovemaking, and the male
continues to seek out females even when they are pregnant. A fifteenth-
century English poet expresses this idea at the end of a brief description
of all of nature, from the sea and the stars to the flowers: “Ac that most
meved me and my mood changed / That Reson rewarded and ruled all
beestes / Save man and his make.”145 The idea would persist until at least
the eighteenth century.146
. . .
According to this model, human action is therefore related to the structure
of the cosmos. This relationship is expressed in several images and, above
all, dominant in the tradition of Platonic influence, that of the imitation of
celestial regularities. This is hardly more than an image, since this “imita-
tion” does not consist of following directives that emanate from the stars.
The very constancy of their revolutions prohibits them from providing
rules adaptable to the infinite diversity of cases that must be confronted by
concrete moral life. Ancient and medieval man, just as much as we, had to
put practical wisdom to work, what Aristotle called phronēsis, whose choices
in no way rest on the structure of the physical universe. One can indeed
build a morality without taking that structure into account and without
making the slightest allusion to “wisdom of the world.” This is the case, I
will repeat, of modern moralities; and, in Antiquity, it was indeed the case
with Aristotle.147 It would therefore seem that cosmology is indifferent to
morality and, consequently, to how man achieves his own humanity.
And yet the cosmos, such as ancient and medieval man represented its
structure, did not provide human action with anything like an indifferent
framework, a stage that would in no way influence the play that was play-
ing on it. The imposing mass of the cosmos hovered over the theater of
human action. Granted, it risked crushing it, revealing its insignificance,
as in the theme repeated a hundred times of the smallness of all empires.
 The Medieval Model
But at the same time its all-encompassing presence was that of a Good.
The battle for the good cause was not waged only in our “little hideout.” It
also unfolded in the majestic scenery of the sky. Or rather, it had been won
from the outset, indeed, it never needed to be waged. The Good tri-
umphed from the start, it coincided with Being. Man’s moral effort toward
the full blossoming of his humanity was in phase with the tendency of all
things toward their perfection. The cosmos was the model for moral ac-
tion only through metaphor; it remained the confirmation of it. If we
might say so, the riskiest moral investments were guaranteed by a gigan-
tic margin.148
To describe the whole situation I have just examined, one might pro-
pose the concept of cosmonomy. Cosmonomy is not to be ranked on either
one side or the other of the distinction that has become popular, and
borrowed from Kant,149 between “autonomy” and “heteronomy.” It it is
not captured by the alternative thus posed—as, moreover, most concrete
moralities are not. It is in fact the insertion into the cosmos that enables
the moral subject to be authentically himself, to be truly an autos. This
conformity in no way consists of bending to an exterior law, an other (het-
eros). For ancient and medieval man, the kosmos was precisely not an ex-
ternal fact which it was necessary to obey. Or it was so as much as Kantian
moral law is. For ancient man, “the starry sky above me and the moral law
in me” were not distinguished by anything essential. For us, finite beings,
explains Kant, the moral law must appear as an external pressure, that is,
as duty, because we have a “pathological” side.150 In the same way, accord-
ing to ancient man, the order of the kosmos appears to us as something ex-
ternal, because our earthly situation does not permit us a favorable point
of view. It is only our insertion into the kosmos where it is most fully it-
self—such as, as Kant would have it, obedience to the moral law—that
confers authentic freedom upon us.
A Cosmological Ethics 
Chapter 
Abrahamic Excess
I have characterized the cosmology of the Middle Ages as lying between
“Timaeus” and “Abraham.” I have described the medieval model along the
lines of the Timaeus. I will now examine the other side, the Abrahamic
model. More specifically, I will see how, among the elements that came
from “Abraham,” some qualified the synthesis to the point of bending it
away from its original direction, whereas others went beyond it, to the point
of threatening its coherence, indeed, of foreshadowing its dissolution.
If what has been described as the dominant model, the Timaeus, already
existed in the pagan world in its main features, and above all in its germi-
nal cell, the appearance of the revealed religions certainly had an influence
on that model. After the irruption of biblical revelation into the Hell-
enized cultural scene, it was necessary to rebalance the concept of the
world by taking the new factors into account. This is, for example, what
inspired Origen to redefine his understanding of the world, in the process
taking stock of the biblical contribution over against the ancient “pagan”
concept of kosmos.1
The Timaean model was not so radically questioned in every medieval
religious context. It was without a doubt in the Christian world that it was
subjected to the greatest scrutiny. It is there, in fact, that the subversive el-
ements of Abrahamism developed their most virulent form. Let us recall
a few of them: creation occurred ex nihilo. God alone is the creator, with-
out anything limiting his free will.2 The world had a beginning in time.
The creation of our visible world was preceded by that of an invisible
world of forms or angels, who are the intermediaries of a continuing cre-
ation. The visible world is ruled by a teleology focusing on man that reca-
pitulates all of creation in sin, but also in the resurrection of the body, ul-
timately focusing everything on God alone.3 It is not impossible that this
radical nature of Christianity explains, at least in part, that it was where it
exercised its influence that the ancient cosmography could be contested.
N E W P ROX I M I T Y
According to “Abraham,” as we have seen, the way the world manifests
God is authentic. Unlike what occurs in Gnosticism, nature, even if it
only lets us guess that God is and who he is, does not disfigure him. This
manifestation does however remain burdened by a double inferiority. On
the one hand, by means of direct knowledge, which does not need to
go through the intermediary of nature. That is how the angels know God,
without “needing to raise their eyes toward this firmament and reading it
there.”4 On the other hand, even if one limits oneself to knowledge acces-
sible to man, nature is no longer how God reveals himself the best. The re-
vealed Law or the incarnate Word say much more about God than does the
world. Consequently, the study of the physical universe, without neces-
sarily being ill advised, much less prohibited, loses a good part of its inter-
est. Augustine sums up well the attitude I am attempting to trace here: it
is not necessary to know the structure of the created world, as soon as one
knows the Creator of it. He was consequently considered a “cosmoclast.”5
The imitation of an order, or one’s insertion into that order, must then
give way to the obedience to an “order”—the word itself changes mean-
ing.6 Ancient Judaism expresses this devaluing in a plastic sense: creation
trembles at the presentation of the gift of the Law, for it feels called upon
to lose its relevance.7 Revelation circumvents other modes of access to God,
and those become provisional and, at best, almost superfluous. Such is the
case with nature. The Talmudic rabbis did not forbid its study, but their
knowledge of nature relates toto which man has only to submit. It also affirms that it is
through wise behavior that the order of the world is first of all formed and
becomes reality. Wise behavior shelters a completely central function, which
creates the cosmos; it has a part in the establishment of the unique cosmic
order.” “Wherever the Ma’at is disturbed, the order in nature is carried
with it and suffers. By contrast, wherever Ma’at is applied, wherever dis-
order is repelled, that, too, has consequences for nature and fertility.”37
Recent work by the Egyptologist Jan Assmann has carried this inter-
pretation even further.38 Far from human activity having simply to insert
itself into the static order of things, it is rather the just practice of man that
contributes to maintaining the world in movement. Assmann retains the
formula of Schmid, who entitled his book “Justice as Cosmic Order,” and
accepts the idea of a cosmic dimension to justice. But he does so at the cost
Prehistory: A Pre-Cosmic Wisdom 
of an inversion. He would rather speak of “the cosmic order as justice.”
Here we have more than just a purely verbal reversal. Indeed, all of a sud-
den human justice is in no way the imitation of a static cosmic order that
existed before it; on the contrary, it is human justice that, assuring har-
mony between the realm of the gods and that of humans, contributes to
keeping an essentially moving cosmic order going.
This rests on a comprehensive vision of things. For the Egyptians, the
cosmos was less an order than a process.39 They did not perceive the cos-
mos spatially, but temporally; not statically, but dynamically; not as a har-
monious division of parts in space, but as a well-oiled course that is car-
ried on without encountering obstacles or barriers. All order is an order of
movement. In this way, good is movement, evil is the halting of that
movement.40 The Egyptians in fact knew a “negative cosmology” in which
the order of the world was constantly threatened by forces that would
cause it to stop and be destroyed. That order could therefore not endure all
alone, but needed endlessly to be renewed. This occurred on every level: it
was not just the individual who had to be justified: the State and the cos-
mos itself also needed justification. Far from being cosmic, Ma’at was
therefore primarily social, it was justice; it was the foundation of the com-
mon life of men. But that justice essentially consisted of establishing the
circularity of exchanges between men in an economy of reciprocity: that
which was done or endured communicated with that which would be done
or endured, action connected and obliged. On every level Ma’at ensured
that the passage was free, and provided the right direction. It is the exis-
tence of that solidarity that integrated the cosmos within the sphere of lin-
guistic communication, thereby giving it a meaning. Without the State,
the cosmos could not endure.
Consequently, the order of the world—and thus that which makes the
world a world—did not exist as an independent reality that hung over hu-
man activity, which was supposed to base itself on it. For anthropology,
cosmology had no normative value. To repeat the system of concepts that
I have proposed, we must say that the concept of “wisdom” encountered in
ancient systems of thought is not a “worldly wisdom.” Order did not exist
prior to wisdom; it did not offer itself up, in the physical cosmos, as a model
to imitate. If the world is what it is through the order that it comprises,
wisdom does not result from the world, but rather produces it as such.41
 Setting the Stage
Chapter 
The Birth of the Cosmos in Greece
We cannot speak of a “wisdom of the world” before the idea of a world had
been thematicized. In order to discover the first concrete linguistic ap-
pearance of the term, we must now look to the Greeks. The Greeks did
not always have this term, one that set them apart from the civilizations of
the ancient Near East. They did not possess the notion of “world” from
the beginning of time; they only developed it gradually, at the end of a
process that for a long time paralleled the one Egypt and Mesopotamia
had undergone. We can distinguish several stages in this process.1 In gen-
eral they present the same characteristics as those that we pointed out
above regarding the great river valley civilizations.
T RA J E C TO RY O F A W H O LE
The use of enumeration can be found in Homer (ca. tenth century ...).
When Homer wishes to speak of all things, he simply juxtaposes them:
sky, earth, sea, nether world, and so on. This is the case when the princi-
pal gods divide up all that exists. In Homer we also find the phrase “the
heaven and the earth,” a formula that would survive for many centuries
after him, used with an authority that was further reinforced once the
Septuagint translation of the Bible had brought the story of creation to
speakers of Greek. Hesiod (ca. – ...) proceeded in the same way,
but he sometimes indicated that his enumeration omitted nothing by
adding the plural neuter adjective “all [things]” (panta).2
The Greek language nevertheless has a resource that not all the Semitic
languages developed and which is lacking in Akkadian, as well as in
Egyptian—an article distinct from the demonstrative, which makes it
possible to render just about any part of speech into a noun. Thus begin-
ning with Heraclitus (ca.  ...) one often finds the same adjective,
panta, as in Hesiod, but now turned into a noun by the article (ta), “all
things.” It was thus no longer necessary to continue with the enumeration
of its content. This appears in seven fragments of Heraclitus himself.3
With Empedocles (ca. – ...), the adjective becomes singular and
one can signify “the All” (to pan). This is found in two fragments.4
Ancient Egypt and Mesopotamia both stopped at this stage of linguis-
tic development. We have seen that Egypt was able to name the object of
the process of the self-evolution of the world “all” (tm) and that Meso-
potamia was able to express the realm over which the supreme god reigned
by the idea of a totality that brooks no exception.5 One might note that the
Hebrew Bible does the same. This is the case, moreover, in texts that go
back almost to the same period as the pre-Socratic authors that we have
just mentioned. It is possible that this is the sense in which we again find
the expression in Second Isaiah (chs. –), which certainly dates from
around  ... In it the God of Israel lists the sequence of his great
deeds in history, up to the return of the captives from Babylon. He begins
by presenting himself like this: “I am the Lord, who made all things (anokı̄
YHWH ’ōseh kol), who stretched out the heavens alone, who spread out the
earth—Who was with me?” “All things” might certainly designate the
world; but it is equally possible that the word kol also encompasses, and on
the same level, historical acts of salvation. Another text clears up any am-
biguity thanks to an advantage found in Hebrew; that language has an ar-
ticle that Akkadian does not, and can therefore turn words into nouns in
a way analogous to that found in Greek. Thus, around a century before
Second Isaiah, around  ..., the prophet Jeremiah says that what the
God of Israel has made is “the whole:” “He is the one who formed all
things” (yōs�er hak-kol hu’).6
In Greek all the expressions that designate the world coexist. They ex-
isted in Byzantine Hellenism, then in modern Greek up to the present time.
T H E G I V EN NA M E
And yet the Greeks set out on a path where other civilizations did not fol-
low. This deviation has multiple aspects that I will not deal with here.7 As
for the topic of concern to me, the innovation was in giving the world a
name of its own. The Greeks did so by choosing the word kosmos. Its ety-
mology is not clear, but its meaning is, beginning with its use in the Iliad:
 Setting the Stage
“order,” always in the fixed expression kata kosmon “in goodorder,” or “or-
nament,” like the boss or stud of a horse’s bit or Hera’s jewels.8 The term
denotes order and beauty, even more specifically the beauty resulting from
order, the beauty that is still implied today by an activity that derives its
name from the word—“cosmetics.” In Greek, the two meanings persisted
side by side and enabled recurring plays on words.9 Similarly, the Latin
mundus, source of the French monde, or “world,” is no doubt the same word
as mundus, the French toilette or “woman’s ornamentation,” the cosmolog-
ical meaning having been derived through imitation of the Greek. This is
in any event what Pliny the Elder asserts: “What the Greeks call kosmos,
we call mundus due to its perfect and faultless elegance (a perfecta absolu-
taque elegantia).”10 The word elegantia is not simply an affectation, but a di-
rect reference to the cosmetic usage of the term mundus. The usage was by
no means a given and for a long time was perceived as a metaphor. Thus
Tertullian recalls that, among the Greeks, the world was named from a
term that actually signifies “ornament.”11 And in the ninth century Jo-
hannes Scotus Eriugena again remarked: “The Greek word kosmos is prop-
erly translated by ornament (ornatus), not by world.”12 Later, following
Goethe, who spoke of “die ewige Zier,” in  Alexander von Humboldt
reintroduced the word kosmos, quickly explained the title of his work by re-
calling the Greek etymology, and paraphrased the word by “ornament of
the ordered” (Schmuck des Geordneten).13
To apply such a term to the “world” assumes an implicit decision regard-
ing the nature of the world. As to the chronological origin of such an appli-
cation, it is traditionally considered an innovation attributed to Pythagoras.
We consider Pythagoras to have reached his prime around – ...,
and we believe he died around – ... Concerning this usage we
have only second-hand accounts—naturally!—that are, moreover, much
later: “Pythagoras was the first to call “kosmos” the encompassing of all
things (hē tōn holōn periokhē), because of the order (taxis) that reigns in it.”14
It is difficult to say what “encompassing of all things” means here. Is it only
that which encompasses, such as the sky? Or, along with it, that which is
encompassed—thus the entire “world”? A parallel in Diogenes Laertius
associates this term with the affirmation of the round shape of the earth.15
This seems to reserve the usage of the term kosmos to the sky (ouranos). In
any event, it seems that we are dealing with Platonic conceptions that were
retroactively projected onto Pythagoras.16 The term is encountered in any
case among various pre-Socratic authors, beginning with Heraclitus, then
in Empedocles, Anaxagoras, and Diogenes of Apollonia.17 But, as we shall
see, it was above all Plato who firmly established its usage.
The Birth of the Cosmos in Greece 
H ERAC LI T U S ’ S D E C I S I O N
I am interested less here in the history of the word than in the conceptual
decision that enabled the emergence of the idea of “world.” And it is only
with Heraclitus, perhaps, that we may find it formulated. The word kos-
mos is found several times in the fragments. Fragment , according to
which wakeful people, unlike dreamers, would have one and the same kos-
mos, contains an anachronistic meaning of the word and should thus be re-
jected. The same is true, and with even greater reason, of fragment .18
Fragment  remains: The most beautiful kosmos comes from things let
loose by chance. But it says nothing of the meaning of the word, which
does not necessarily designate the world.
It is the very familiar Fragment  that to me seems not only to contain,
but in fact to create, the meaning of the word kosmos. I will hazard to trans-
late it quite literally and will begin by reproducing the original text, as a
sign of my hesitation: Kosmon [tonde] ton auton hapantōn, oute tis theōn oute
anthrōpōn epoiēsen, all’ ēn aei kai estin kai estai: pur aeizōon, haptomenon me-
tra kai aposbennumenon metra. “This world, the same for all, it is neither a
god nor a man who has made it, but always, it was, it is, it will be: an ever-
living fire, kindling in measures, and being extinguished in measures.”19 It
is not easy to see what the exact meaning of kosmos truly is. Is it the “world”
or the “order” of things? The referent of the word is no clearer: that which
“kindles and is extinguished in measures”—might it designate the adorn-
ment of the celestial vault, the stars in all their beauty? or perhaps the
“fire,” often interpreted as cosmic fire since the time of Theophrastus,20
then by the Stoics? As for the idea that the kosmos was not made by any
god or man, the second negation is obviously the more problematic. Who,
indeed, has ever claimed that the world is a human work? The Ancients
were already disturbed by the expression, as was Plutarch, who proposed
an improbable explanation of it.21 Most of the time modern commenta-
tors avoid the issue by seeing the expression as a “polar expression with an
all-inclusive sense; its components are not to be taken separately and lit-
erally.”22 This is hardly convincing, given the extremely concise nature and
significance of Heraclitus’s style.
In any case we see the affirmation of the idea of an ordered totality suffi-
cient in itself and about which it is explicitly said that it does not require
the intervention of an external influence. As for the necessity of excluding
an active role on the part of men, it is perhaps possible to understand this
on the basis of an ancient conception, notably that of the Egyptians, as
mentioned above, according to which the order of the world was main-
 Setting the Stage
tained by the intervention of men. We need not suppose that Heraclitus
was aware of Egyptian thought: Greece had analogous conceptions, for
example, the idea according to which the gods were nourished by the
smoke of sacrifices.23
T H E S O C RAT I C S : F RO M T H E WO R L D TO T H E S KY
During the time of the Socratic revolution, the word kosmos was well on
its way to being understood in the exclusive sense of a cosmic order. A text
by Xenophon is particularly revealing in this regard.24 He wishes to defend
Socrates from the accusation of impiety that had been leveled against him.
Xenophon begins by clearing his master of the suspicion that he is inter-
ested in physics, something that was viewed as the supreme impiety, a
charge that had to be disproved first. Socrates, according to Xenophon,
“did not discuss the nature of all things (hē tōn pantōn phusis) [. . .], by ex-
amining how what the specialists (sophistai) call “order” (kosmos) exists and
through which necessities occurs each celestial thing (tōn ouraniōn).” Fur-
thermore, not only did Socrates abstain from practicing physics, he ridiculed
those who participated in the study of physics and called them fools. He
criticized them on two points: (a) Before studying nature, one must al-
ready have a sufficient knowledge of human things. And that was almost
impossible. One could therefore not examine “phenomena that related to
the divine” (daimonia) except by neglecting human things; (b) The study
of natural phenomena ends in nothing practical. Those who study human
matters do so because they expect to be able to apply what they’ve learned
“to themselves and to whomever they wish.” By contrast, “those who seek
divine things” (theia) do not imagine that, “once they have learned through
which necessities each thing has arisen, they will make, each time they
would like, winds, rains, seasons, and any other thing of this type that they
might need.” Perhaps just such a mastery of meteorology was envisioned
by Empedocles.25 The physicists Xenophon is thinking of do not seem to
harbor such illusions; they are content with a theoretical knowledge, in-
deed are proud of its purity.
One can perceive a certain unease in using the word kosmos in the sense
of world; such usage is credited tothe sophistai. Sophistai did not yet desig-
nate the “sophists,” with the pejorative connotation that Plato gave the term,
but simply competent people, the talented, the knowledgeable. Kosmos
was still perceived as a technical term, indeed a bit pretentious, and in any
case outside the realm of good form. A “gentleman” like Xenophon took
care to keep some distance from the specialists. Further, divine matters, as
The Birth of the Cosmos in Greece 
they are different from human matters, are above all celestial matters. They
are sometimes called “divine,” sometimes “demonic.” The two adjectives
can be distinguished elsewhere, for example in Aristotle, for whom nature
was not divine, but demonic.26 Here it indeed seems that they are used as
synonyms. In other passages, it is clear that the action of the gods is car-
ried out to ensure the “order of all things” (hē tōn holōn taxis), a synonym
for “the totality of the world” (ho holos kosmos),27 or, to state the same thing
from the opposite direction, that this order arises out the sphere of the di-
vine. The distinction is not made between celestial bodies, which are not
mentioned in the passage, and meteorological phenomena, which are dealt
with later with the “winds, waters, seasons.” The accent is placed on the
inaccessibility, on our inability to exercise any influence over that which we
can only see, only contemplate. Whereas the knowledge of human mat-
ters provides a unified and translatable knowledge that one can use both
for oneself and for others, an understanding of natural things remains
closed on itself.
Finally, we can note the identification of “the nature of all things” with
the kosmos. The distinction between the sky and the earth up to now sym-
bolized the distinction between the realm of that which is within our reach
and that which forever remains beyond us. Henceforth, it is all of nature
that inherits the status of the sky. That which is natural, even if it is within
our reach, even if we can point it in the direction that we choose, to the
point of thwarting its effects, fundamentally escapes us, indeed because it
maintains a “nature,” a course that it follows without our intervention and
which it will resume as soon as our action upon it ceases.
Plato’s work represents a decisive point of departure in the history I
wish to recount, especially his Timaeus, a dialogue that was doubtless cre-
ated late in his literary career, and which was to have an enormous influ-
ence. As for the history of the language, it was with Plato that the word
kosmos was installed definitively and without ambiguity in its meaning as
“world.” And at the same time, in this very usage, it reveals what was prob-
lematic in the underlying concept. Timaeus causes the concept of kosmos
to function by providing the first description of reality as forming an or-
dered whole, both good and beautiful. The final words of the text sum up
its meaning: “. . . this world (hode ho kosmos), has thus become a visible liv-
ing creature embracing all that are visible and an image of the intelligible,
a perceptible god, supreme in greatness and excellence, in beauty and per-
fection, this Heaven (heis ouranos hode) single in its kind and one.”28 This
pompous formula echoes the assertions made earlier: the one who created
did not create two worlds or an infinity of worlds; “this Heaven has come
 Setting the Stage
to be and is and shall be hereafter one and unique.”29 The world is identified
with the sky. That which initially designated “the sky and the earth” is so to
speak absorbed by the sky. The all-encompassing movement is the same as
in the passage from Xenophon, even though the tone is different: it is no
longer a common inaccessibility that connects meteorological facts with
the inaccessible celestial phenomena by tearing them together from our
grasp; it is henceforth the beauty of the world that connects it to the sky.
This same movement comes to an end in Aristotle, in whom it forms
the result of a passage that looks flatly lexicographical in nature. The Phi-
losopher distinguishes three meanings of the word “sky” (ouranos): “(a) the
substance of the last sphere of the universe or the natural body that is
found in that sphere; (b) the body that is continuous with the last sphere
of the universe; (c) the body enveloped by the last sphere.”30 We will have
recognized respectively the sphere of the fixed stars, the heavenly bodies,
indeed, all that is contained within the sphere of fixed stars, including the
earth. The semantic mutation that enables that final meaning is rendered
possible, indeed necessary, by an alteration in the representation of the
universe. This wasn’t possible so long as the sky was imagined as a flat
plane above the earth. But once the sky was considered to be rounded and
enveloping the earth on all sides, one could, by synecdoche, call the con-
tent by the name of the container: just as one calls “a bottle of wine” not
only the glass container, but the wine it contains, so could one call “sky” all
that the sky contains.
This semantic slippage is however not without consequences, for it is
not a given that one can transfer all the properties of the container over to
the contents. In Timaeus, the world is presumed to be “beautiful and good.”
Are these qualities compatible? The Greeks sometimes asked themselves
that question.31 Be that as it may, the outline of what appears to be a defi-
nite plan begins to emerge: an interpretation of the world taking its pat-
tern from the sky, or, if we may say so, the “ouranizing” of the kosmos.
T H E WO R L D A S A C H O I C E
Thus, “world” has never designated a simple description of reality: it has
always translated a value judgement, the fruit of a sort of act of faith, either
positive or negative. Greek scientists were aware that they not only had
a knowledge of the kosmos, but that their use of the term had essentially
constructed the kosmos as such, as a kosmos. We see the development of
this awareness in a passage of Simplicius, a neo-Platonist commentator
on Aristotle (beginning of the sixth century ..), who himself claims to
The Birth of the Cosmos in Greece 
reproduce a teaching of the Stoic Poseidonius (second century ...): “The
task of the contemplation of nature (theōria phusikē) is to examine the sub-
stance of the sky and the stars, the power and the quality of generation and
corruption, and, by Zeus!, it is capable of leading demonstrations on the
subject of the size, the form and the order of things. As for astronomy (as-
trologia), it does not undertake to speak of anything like that, but it demon-
strates the order (taxis) of celestial things, having declared (apophēnasa)
that the sky (ouranos) is truly a world (kosmos); it speaks of forms, sizes, dis-
tances from the Earth to the Sun and the Moon, eclipses, the conjunctions
of the stars, on the quality and quantity [that are shown] in their revolu-
tions.”32 This is a classic outline of the respective roles of astronomy, at-
tentive to saving phenomena by proposing mathematical models, and of
physics, which must explain what truly occurs. But it reveals a basic pre-
supposition: the world is not something we can passively notice, but some-
thing that the wise man must posit as such.
We can moreover reverse the formula, in the spirit of the “philosophies
[that are] suspicious” or critical of ideologies: to posit the world as a kos-
mos is the work of a wise man, who sees in it the mirror of his own wis-
dom. This is in any case what is suggested in an amazing aside made by
Plato: “The unanimous choir of sages asserts in fact that the Intellect is for
us the king of the sky and the earth, and, in doing so, it is in reality of them-
selves that they make an object of veneration (heautous ontōs semnunontes).”33
These words are followed by a “perhaps they are right,” which I take as
ironic. Let us translate the main idea bluntly in plain language: sages give
themselves a model of the world thatensures their dominion, at least sym-
bolically. The sovereignty of the Intellect is the legitimation of “intellec-
tuals.” A much later parallel has been found in someone who however
presents himself as an overt opponent of Plato—Nietzsche: “Let us dis-
tance supreme goodness from the concept of God: it is not worthy of a
god. Let us also distance supreme wisdom. It is the vanity of philosophers
that has become guilty of this absurdity: a God-monster of wisdom. It
was supposed to resemble them as much as possible.”34
These abysses, quickly opened up, were just as quickly closed, and the
world was presented, in classical thought, as the ultimate case of order and
rationality. We will examine the consequences of this in some depth.
Out of this Greek concept of the world as kosmos there arose an an-
thropological dimension. This might appear paradoxical if, as I have as-
sumed, the concept of “world” only becomes possible at the moment when
man has been excluded from its contents. In fact, the Greek idea of world
contains an implicit appeal to the idea of subject, which it obliquely draws
 Setting the Stage
into it. Man is completely excluded from any active role in the construc-
tion of the world. But it is exactly because man does no “making” to the
world, because his presence adds nothing to any part of the world and his
absence takes nothing from it, that he is able to appear as the subject to
which the world shows itself in its totality. This fact is and will remain a
given, even in the most recent developments of the idea of the world, as
we shall see.
Now, once the issue of the relationship of man’s humanity to his pres-
ence in the physical universe has been raised, we can imagine different
ways of dealing with it. Several of these models of response have been de-
fended effectively. I now propose a summary description of them. I have
chosen to group the models under four headings. Each constitutes a sort
of ideal type and does not necessarily coincide in every detail with the
proper name or names which I have chosen as convenient labels for them.
Therefore I will examine in this order: “Timaeus,” Epicurus, the revealed
Scriptures, and Gnosticism. It goes without saying that they are not the
only spiritual currents of Antiquity. But other currents appeared not to be
as pertinent to the question I am raising here, for at least two reasons.
In fact there were spiritual currents, on the one hand, that do not ap-
pear to have envisioned the question, and therefore do not have very much
to say about it. This is the case of the Sophists, the Cynics, and the Skep-
tics. Compared with the four models under study, they form a sort of “de-
gree zero.” Granted, this lack of interest is in itself interesting and demands
an explanation, but it does not enter into the framework of my study. On
the other hand, there were currents that, in relation to the four models I
am highlighting, seem to propose only a variant or an intermediary ap-
proach. Stoicism, for example, at least in relation to my study, seems to
boil down to the Timaean model, and this is why I will deal with it within
the framework of the dominant model. I will proceed in this way for his-
torical reasons and for other reasons that are more fundamental. Indeed,
the Stoic current mixed its waters relatively early with those of middle Pla-
tonism, and it was in that form that it was able to exercise an influence on
the Middle Ages, unlike ancient Stoicism, whose master works were trans-
mitted only in very fragmented form. In addition, in the context of this
syncretism, it abandoned, or indeed shaded, that by which its vision of the
world was distinguished from that of Timaeus: above all the idea of a cos-
mogony interrupted by periodic conflagrations.
The Birth of the Cosmos in Greece 
Chapter 
Socrates’ Revolution;
Plato’s Restoration
The Greeks believed that the world and its human subjects were primarily
connected through the existence of laws that governed them all, and that
those laws were of a moral nature. This idea was not specifically Greek. It
can be found, for example, in Persia; the conception of the universe as a
struggle between good and evil is at the heart of the doctrine of Zoroaster.
Nietzche claimed to have named his hero Zarathustra so that the very man
who was responsible for the moral interpretation of the world, for a Pla-
tonism that was more ancient than Plato himself, would be expected to
compensate for his error by undoing it.1 In Greece moral concepts also
functioned as cosmology: ideas of justice, equality before the law, etc., were
principles used to explain elementary cycles.2 But it is one thing to have
moral ideas intervene in an explanation of physical phenomena; it is some-
thing else again to make those ideas into the very structure of reality and
that which justifies a global view of that reality as constituting a “world.”
For a clear expression of this idea we have to wait for a well-known text
by Plato, which has remained a favorite in anthologies since Antiquity:
“Wise men tell us . . . that heaven and earth and gods and men are held
together by communion (koinōnia) and friendship, by orderliness (kos-
miotēs), temperance, and justice; and that is the reason . . . why they call
the whole of this world (to holon touto) by the name of order (kosmos), not
of disorder (akosmia) or dissoluteness.”3 The kosmos formed by the uni-
verse, however gigantic it may be, is ultimately only a specific case: that
which is said about it is the application of a rule that holds for all reality:
it is the sort of order (kosmos) found in each being that renders a being
good.4 The “wise men,” or competent people, are not pointed out by name.
Socrates lists five virtues that make the world a world. The final two were
to take their place among the four cardinal virtues. The central virtue bears
a name that is formed from the same root as the word kosmos. Might one
use this idea as the principle for an explanation of things? Is justice cosmic
as the kosmos is just?
T H E S O C RAT I C REVO LU T I O N
Such a way of viewing things could not make headway until an obstacle
had been overcome: this is what has been called the “Socratic revolution.”5
It is important to examine this phenomenon but I will do so only from the
point of view that concerns us here. The formula, which has become tra-
ditional, assumes a particular interpretation of the facts as related by the
Ancients, and that interpretation assumes an excessive simplification of a
very complex process.6 Aristotle was content to distinguish what Socrates
was talking about, that is, things that related to the moral qualities of
people (ta ēthika), from what he did not mention, that is, nature in its to-
tality (phusis).7 Elsewhere, he even seems to regret Socrates’ lack of inter-
est in physics: “In Socrates’ time, [the preoccupation with verbal defini-
tions] increased, while one ceased to seek that which concerned nature (ta
peri phuseōs), so that those who philosophized deviated (apeklinan) toward
useful virtue, that is, politics.”8 Earlier, Xenophon had portrayed, at least
as an initial approach, a Socrates who disapproved the study of nature, or,
in any event, the in-depth study of it.9 The difference between the two
concerns is not always presented as a diachronic passage from one to the
other. But Aristophanes in his own way shows that this turn of events was
not simply a pure reconstruction: the Clouds shows indirectly that the
young Socrates was indeed interested in physics; otherwise the play would
be incomprehensible. It is even possible that the play was not only the re-
flection of a historical fact, but the cause of it: Socrates may have been
warned of the dangers of physics while seeing the play, and might then
have turned his attention elsewhere.10
We have the henceforth canonical formula for this revolution in a fa-
miliar passage by Cicero. I will cite it here in order to emphasize an aspect
of it that seems of prime